Center for Bioethics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
J Med Ethics. 2020 Jan;46(1):16-17. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2019-105808. Epub 2019 Oct 29.
Savulescu and colleagues have provided interesting insights into how the UK public view the 'best interests' of children like Charlie Gard. But is best interests the right standard for evaluating these types of cases? In the USA, both clinical decisions and legal judgments tend to follow the 'harm principle', which holds that parental choices for their children should prevail unless their decisions subject the child to avoidable harm. The case of Charlie Gard, and others like it, show how the USA and the UK have strikingly different approaches for making decisions about the treatment of severely disabled children.
萨弗勒斯库及其同事深入探讨了英国公众如何看待像查理·加德这样的儿童的“最大利益”。但是，“最大利益”是否是评估此类案件的正确标准？在美国，临床决策和法律判决往往遵循“伤害原则”，即父母应为子女做出选择，除非其决定使子女遭受可避免的伤害。查理·加德案以及类似的案例表明，美国和英国在决定如何治疗严重残疾儿童方面采取了截然不同的方法。
