No child left without a brain scan? Toward a pediatric neuroethics.

Brain research is yielding new information about the development of cognitive and behavioral traits in children--and how development can go off track. This is information parents, teachers, and others will use to help with problems from dyslexia to drug abuse. But with this information, often technical, come many questions. Will knowledge from brain scans be used to label children early in life? How will confidentiality be maintained as diverse providers, some of them commercial, compete for patients? Should government pay for scanning all children to identify not only potential problems but also extraordinary potential? These are questions about values and mutual responsibilities in neuroscience--the domain of neuroethics. The authors consider what an ethical framework for applying the fruits of neuroscience to children--a pediatric neuroethics--might look like.