[2] It is a nationally ranked, freestanding acute care children's hospital located at the centre of Harvard Longwood Medical and Academic Area in Boston, Massachusetts.

[4][5][6] It provides comprehensive pediatric specialties and subspecialties to infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21[7][8][9] throughout Massachusetts, the United States, and the world.

[19] Its Advanced Fetal Care Center can begin interventions at 15 weeks gestation,[20] and, in some situations (e.g., congenital heart disease and strabismus), Children's also treats adult patients.

[37] William Ladd, a doctor with Children's, devised procedures for correcting various congenital defects such as intestinal malformations in 1920, launching the specialty of pediatric surgery.

Sidney Farber, pediatric pathologist, requested Yellapragada Subbarow (a friend and colleague from Harvard Medical School then working at Lederle Laboratories) to supply aminopterin and later amethopterin (methotrexate) to conduct trials on to children with leukemia, a diagnosis that was deemed a "death sentence,"[40] in 1948.

The results showed that "children whose teeth had the highest lead levels were far behind those with the lowest on measures including IQ, motor coordination and attentiveness in class.

In 1998 Children's establishes its Advanced Fetal Care Center to provide diagnostic services, genetic and obstetrical counseling, and prenatal or immediate postpartum intervention for fetuses with complex birth defects.

[45] In 2002 Scott Pomeroy and Todd Golub use microarray gene expression profiling to identify different types of brain tumors and predict clinical outcome.

[43] Also in 2002, Nader Rifai helps to author a paper showing that cholesterol levels and LSD use are less accurate predictors of predisposition to strokes and heart attacks then presence of a C-reactive protein that can be found in blood test results.

[43] Heung Bae Kim and Tom Jaksic develop, test and successfully perform the world's first serial transverse enteroplasty (STEP) procedure for patients with short bowel syndrome in 2003.

[43] The next year, Children's surgeons perform New England's first multi visceral organ transplant when 11-month-old Abdullah Alazemi receives a stomach, pancreas, liver, and small intestine from a single donor.

[47] Also in 2005, neurosurgeon Benjamin Warf brought a technique back to Boston Children's for shuntlessly treating hydrocephalus, the condition of excess fluid around the brain.

In collaboration with Life Technologies, Boston Children's spins out its genetic diagnostic lab in January 2013 to a new firm called Claritas Genomics.

[53] It brings together the resources and expertise of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital to offer advanced care and innovative treatments.

[61] The BCH doctors doubted that difficult-to-confirm diagnosis, owing to the lack of abnormal blood markers and the fact that there had been no finding of an accumulation of mitochondria in the cell membranes of skeletal muscles, often called the "hallmark of mitochondrial disorders".

[61]) Jurriaan Peters, a pediatric neurologist at BCH who evaluated Pelletier, suspected somatoform disorder—a psychological condition creating or worsening physical symptoms.

[64] The Boston Children's Hospital team crafted a treatment plan, with input from some of Pelletier's doctors at Tufts, to "de-medicalize" the case and provide in-hospital psychological care.

[60] Custody of Pelletier was transferred to that agency by order of Judge Joseph Johnston, and the DCF elected to keep her in treatment at Boston Children's Hospital.

[65][60][66] Pelletier was held in Boston Children's Hospital's psychiatric ward, Bader 5, from 14 February 2013, until January 2014, when she was transferred to Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, a residential treatment center in Framingham.

[71] The case, covered extensively by the media, sparked public protests and a cyberattack campaign on the hospital by Martin Gottesfeld (who was subsequently criminally charged and convicted).

The video was removed after the hospital started receiving large amounts of online criticism, despite the physician not suggesting that the procedure is offered to children.

[94] The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) also launched an investigation into the threats and has spoken out in support of the hospital, saying that they will "ensure equal protection of transgender people under the law".

", adding that "These threats with innocent people at risk divert law enforcement from responding to actual emergencies are costly to taxpayers, and cause undue stress to victims and the community.

[102] Michael Haller, a professor of pediatric endocrinology at the University of Florida, said that "A lot of people have chosen to try to be as quiet about their practice as they can to avoid those direct attacks" and that "Institutions have removed their websites, taken down their publicly facing phone numbers.

"[82] Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Boston Children's Hospital of "playing the victim" after receiving a bomb threat.

[113] In 2010, a drug that boosts numbers of blood stem cells, originally discovered in zebrafish in the Boston Children's Hospital laboratory of Leonard I. Zon, M.D., went to clinical trial in patients with leukemia and lymphoma.

[130] Children's Hospital scientist John Enders and his team were first to successfully culture the polio virus and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954.

[131] Joseph Murray, chief plastic surgeon at Children's Hospital Boston from 1972 to 1985 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for his research on immunosuppression, specifically his "discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease".

[134] Sidney Farber received the Lasker in 1966 for his 1947 discovery that a combination of aminopterin and methotrexate, both folic acid antagonists, could produce remission in patients with acute leukemia, and for "his constant leadership in the search for chemical agents against cancer".

[137] Porter W. Anderson, Jr. received the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award with David H. Smith in 1996 for groundbreaking work in the development and commercialization of the Hemophilus influenza type B vaccine.