ABSTRACT

Children are no longer regarded by the law as second-rate citizens, replaceable and not worthy of consideration. Since the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1998), children are now seen as persons deserving of special protection, with the right to participate in the decisions that affect them. This change in attitude has also been seen within medical research where children are no longer regarded as mere objects of experimentation. However, even at the beginning of the twenty first century, there is still a reluctance to involve children in research and it is only relatively recently that specific biobanks have been established that focus solely on children’s development and diseases.