Medicine, dealing as it does with human beings when they are most vulnerable, is a combination of science, technology – and ethics. All human action has ethical implications, and this book is an exercise in making explicit the ethical implications of action by practicing physicians and other clinicians in the context of a particularly vulnerable population, the infants and children in pediatric medical practice. The book is aimed at several possible audiences, including the primary-care providers who care for children with a high mortality risk or the potential for significant debilitating morbidity, and the physicians in tertiary-care institutions, for whom the clinical scenarios described will sound very familiar. It can serve as a case collection for ethics education of ethics committee members, medical students, and residents. But it is hoped that it will be useful as well to those non-medical professionals who play a role in the ethical life of healthcare institutions, or to lay people who have reason to seek to learn more about the specialized and sometimes confusing world of high-tech care for seriously ill children and the thoughtful and well-intentioned healthcare professionals who wrestle with ethical issues in that world.

To maximize its usefulness to this variety of possible constituencies, the editors have chosen a case and commentary format, asking physicians (and in one case a nurse) to provide detailed clinical accounts of cases in their practice which presented perplexing ethical issues.