Six Degrees -- Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by M. Lynas. London, Fourth Estate, 2007. 358pp.

This paper is about the care of babies with confirmed or potential neurological problems in neonatal intensive care units. Drawing on recent ethnographic research, the paper considers parents' experiences of sharing information and decisions with neonatal staff, and approaches that support or...

Current national and international economic policies are exerting ever more direct pressures on children's lives and futures. This paper reviews key concerns and contradictions in neoliberal economic policies' effects on childhood. Alternative feminist and green economics and critical theory...

Six Degrees – Our Future on a Hotter Planet, by M. Lynas. London, Fourth Estate, 2007. 358pp.

Current national and international economic policies are exerting ever more direct pressures on children's lives and futures. This paper reviews key concerns and contradictions in neoliberal economic policies' effects on childhood. Alternative feminist and green economics and critical theory...

Promoting informed choice is commonly recognised as the chief purpose and benefit of prenatal screening, its very presence being viewed as a key way in which the process can be distanced from eugenics. As the number of conditions and features which can potentially be screened for rises, dilemmas...

Partly in order to dissociate itself from eugenics, genetic counselling values the principle of nondirectiveness as a key feature. Recent reports have upheld the importance of this approach, treating it unproblematically. However, doubts have been expressed about whether nondirective counselling...

Routine prenatal screening is based on the assumption that it is reasonable for prospective parents to choose to prevent a life with Down's syndrome. This paper questions whether Down's syndrome necessarily involves the costs, limitations and suffering which are assumed in the prenatal...

This paper concentrates on controversies about children's consent, and reviews how children's changing status as competent decision makers about healthcare and research has gradually gained greater respect. Criteria for competence have moved from age towards individual children's experience and...