Abstract

A reader confronting this collection of essays might wonder if something went awry in Jacksonville, Florida, in February 2014, when conference organizers gathered pediatric bioethicists and international child rights advocates to discuss the application of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to the work of clinical bioethics in the United States. Surely a document proclaiming a worldwide consensus on child rights would strengthen the hand of ethicists advising clinicians and researchers who face difficult decisions. Yet the conference discussion—and resulting manuscripts—depict a deep divide: bioethicists largely rejected the notion that the CRC is a useful..