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Challenging parental decisions to overtreat children.

Concerns about undertreatment have dominated the discussions about parents’ medical decisions on behalf of their children. For example, a parent’s refusal to consent to lifesaving treatment for a severely handicapped newborn has been characterized as child abuse or neglect. A very different question, raised more recently, is whether parental decisions demanding overtreatment for children should also be classified as child abuse and, therefore, constitute a basis to displace parental authority over those decisions. This article explores some of the issues raised by cases of overtreatment and the implications of superseding parental control.