[Clinical Research without Direct Profit in Children and the Best Interest Standard]

Clinical research has an ambivalent nature for the benefits it promises and the risks we inevitably incur.\r\nWhen the subjects involved are minors, ethical issues become more complicated. The ethical importance\r\nof the matter is revealed especially when assessing clinical trials in which children are exposed to high\r\nrisk (it can involve even the subject’s live), because those children have no legal skill to decide about the\r\nquestion, and when the big institutions (pharmaceutical companies, universities or public institutions) give\r\npreference to research ‘progress’, over the welfare of the minors. In this paper we analyze on which criteria\r\nresearch involving children is uphold, as well as the standards that should be applied in this activity, and\r\nwe will detain particularly in the valuation of the use of placebo, especially when the children involved in\r\na trial do not receive a direct profit from it.