Covid-19, children, clinical trials and compassion: the ethical case for using innovative or compassionate treatments

Larcher, V; Caplan, A; Brierley, J

AIM: Safe, effective SARS-CoV-2 treatment has not yet been determined, though some drugs have favourable mortality and morbidity benefits in specific situations. No treatments have been explicitly tested in children, who are, therefore, once again therapeutic orphans. METHOD: We echo calls to enrol patients, including children, into trials but note children recruited to date have been additions to adult studies. Few were recruited during the initial pandemic despite the emergence of PIMS-TS/MIS-C, which surely demanding paediatric-specific research. RESULT: Must children be proscribed treatments effective in adults until child-specific data emerges, even in a pandemic? Will appropriately powered dedicated trials ever determine specific child-COVID-19 treatment pathways? Is the protracted time frame to assemble such data acceptable to children with severe COVID-19 today? Such factors are relevant in considering whether children should have access to compassionate, innovative, pandemic-disease treatment. CONCLUSION: We argue that children should be permitted, indeed have a right, to access innovative treatments early in any future pandemic, following an individual best interests consideration. This will remain the case until formal studies powered to determine children's optimal treatment commence, when the moral duty switches to ensuring children are enrolled, with any preceding innovative-use data made available to researchers.