[Therapeutic testing. Procedure in pediatric anaesthesia (author's transl)]

In pediatric anaesthesia, the therapeutic research raises ethical, moral and legal problems. The reexamination of three personal experimental procedures: ketamine (1970), propanidide (1971), etomidate (1978) yields suggestions concerning the use of new anesthetic drug in children. The experimental procedures in pediatric anesthesia need: --a great number of experimental results in "adults" animals but also in "growing" animals, --sufficient experiments in human adults, --an anesthetic medical staff especially trained in practice of pediatric anesthesia, --a special care for th convenient protocol. Moral and ethical problems concern: --the direct benefit, --the discernible risk, --the inclusion of non critically ill minor children in the procedure and the legal right of "informed consent". The approval of the design, details and ethical criteria of the research by a medical ethics committee seems the only judicious way.