Do Children Get Their Fair Share of Health and Dental Care?

This paper reviews the work of several authors, D.W. Brock, D. Callahan, L. Churchill, L.M. Kopelman, R. Tong who consider assumptions and arguments about how to allocated health and dental care to children fairly. They use various approaches including feminist, rights based, and principled considerations, applying general notions of duty or justice to the issues of children's access to basic health and dental care. Two discuss these issues in relation to the work of David Hume. These authors consider children's greatest unmet health needs, including that of dental care, often mistakenly regarded as medically unimportant in terms of children's wellbeing, opportunities, and self-image. They review possible age bias against children in the allocation of health and dental care, the gap between what we say and do where children are concerned, and whether some fundamental shift in social thinking needs to occur. Key words: Brock, Callahan, Churchill, Kopelman, Tong, children, health care, dental care, children, resource allocation, ethics, justice In this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, ®ve authors consider assumptions and arguments about how to allocate health and dental care to children fairly. A growing number of children worldwide lack basic health care and many more have little or no dental care available to them. These authors argue that the failure to provide good dental care to children or inte-grate it into other aspects of health services profoundly affects children's well being, opportunities and self-image. Unfortunately, dental care is sometime