How many parents would say ‘yes of course!’ if asked to consent to their child being involved in a research study – perhaps involving extra blood tests or additional scans as well as the planned treatment? Many of us would hesitate, or refuse outright, concerned either about any associated risks, or about the additional and unnecessary (from this child’s perspective) discomfort or distress. And yet all of us hope and expect that, when our children are ill, they will receive treatment based on the best possible evidence as to its effectiveness – evidence that cannot be straightforwardly derived from adult studies because children are not simply ‘small adults’, and their bodies deal with medicines differently. Similarly, data from older children cannot simply be extrapolated to toddlers or newborns.

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