A father who had been fighting to stop a hospital withdrawing life support from his seriously ill son has dropped his objections. The one-year-old, known as Baby RB for legal reasons, was born with a rare, genetic muscle condition that makes it hard for him to breathe independently. The hospital was backed by the baby's mother. But the move had been strongly opposed by the child's father at a High Court hearing. However, the father changed his mind after hearing medical evidence which suggested it would be in the best interests of the child if medical support was withdrawn. Lawyers for the health authority caring for the baby in intensive care told Mr Justice McFarlane: "All of the parties in court now agree that it would be in RB's best interests for the course suggested by the doctors to be followed."
A father who went to the High Court to try to stop a hospital turning off his seriously ill baby son's life support machine has dropped his objections to the move. The outcome has prompted a mixture of sadness and relief. For six days they had sat in the bland surroundings of Court 50 at London's High Court listening to others talking about their baby son's quality of life. A host of paediatricians, nurses, and experts went into the witness box. Many of them urged a judge to decide that this profoundly disabled 13-month-old boy should be allowed to die. It was, they said, no longer in his best interests to keep him alive.
The order by Mr Justice Baker was issued in a case involving a woman, who can be referred to only as "M". She has been in "a minimally conscious state" since suffering from swelling of the brain stem, which caused serious damage and wasting to the brain. The woman suffered the illness in 2003, when she was 43, and has been minimally conscious since then.
A mother is seeking a court's permission to withdraw life-sustaining artificial nutrition and hydration from her brain-damaged daughter. The woman, 53, who can only be referred to as "M" for legal reasons, is in a "minimally conscious state".
Parichehr Salasel believed that where there was life, there was hope. Two doctors at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre disagreed, saying that it is in the best interests of her husband, Hassan Rasouli, who is in a permanent vegetative state, to be taken off life support and provided with palliative care until his death. The seven-month medical conflict over Mr. Rasouli’s fate ended on Wednesday when Ontario’s top court took Ms. Salasel’s side in a ruling that is expected to reignite for Canadians the emotional issue of how to handle end-of-life decisions and whether extraordinary medical interventions save lives or merely prolong dying.
The Supreme Court of Canada will go ahead later this year and set a legal framework for when patients in a vegetative state can be withdrawn from life support. The court rejected a request this morning from the family of a severely ill Toronto man, Hassan Rasouli, to withdraw the case from its docket on the grounds that Mr. Rasouli recently passed into a higher degree of consciousness.
A judge has ordered that doctors can switch off a young boy's life-support system even though his devout Christian parents pleaded for him to be kept alive in case of a miracle.
Terminally ill children are subjected to needless suffering amounting to 'torture' by parents who refuse to allow the withdrawal of treatment because of their religious beliefs, leading doctors have claimed.
The family of a man left in a vegetative state after a heart attack has made an eleventh hour appeal for doctors to do all they can to keep him alive as they await a vital court ruling. Tomorrow, the court of protection in London will be asked to rule in a dispute over whether it is in "the best interests" of the severely brain-damaged man, who is from the Greater Manchester area, to continue to receive life-saving treatment if his condition deteriorates. Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust claim it is not in the best interests to offer the man, known only as L, ventilation or resuscitation if his condition worsens and he suffers "a life-threatening event", such as another heart attack. But his family disagree and say they, not the trust, must be given the right to decide on his care.
A hospital trust can withhold life-saving treatment from a severely brain-damaged Muslim man if his condition deteriorates, a court has ruled. Doctors argued it would be unfair to resuscitate the patient, known as Mr L, if his condition worsened. His family, of Greater Manchester, said that was against their Muslim faith. At the Court of Protection, Mr Justice Moylan said it would be lawful to withhold treatment as it would not prolong life "in any meaningful way". He added: "It would result in death being characterised by a series of harmful interventions without any realistic prospect of such treatment producing any benefit."
The question in this case is whether a baby known as X should be removed from a ventilator and made the subject only of palliative care. As the evidence is that he will almost certainly die within minutes, or at best hours, of such removal, it will be readily apparent that this case is both tragic and difficult.
A woman left with irreversible brain damage and diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state is to be allowed to die with dignity after a judge dismissed reports by two “shocked” therapy assistants that she may have repeatedly whispered the word "die". Mr Justice Roderic Wood, sitting in the Court of Protection in London, ruled that "J", 56, who suffered a catastrophic heart attack in September 2010, is in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) "with no sense of awareness and no prospect of recovery".
Although DJ's condition is in many respects grim, I am not persuaded that treatment would be futile or overly burdensome, or that there is no prospect of recovery. (a) In DJ's case, the treatments in question cannot be said to be futile, based upon the evidence of their effect so far. (b) Nor can they be said to be futile in the sense that they could only return DJ to a quality of life that is not worth living. (c) Although the burdens of treatment are very great indeed, they have to be weighed against the benefits of a continued existence. (d) Nor can it be said that there is no prospect of recovery: recovery does not mean a return to full health, but the resumption of a quality of life that DJ would regard as worthwhile. The references, noted above, to a cure or a return to the former pleasures of life set the standard unduly high.
This application concerns AW, a 57-year-old woman who is in a permanent vegetative state. It is made by the NHS Trust responsible for her care, which seeks a declaration that it is lawful and in her best interests to withdraw active medical treatment, including specifically artificial nutrition and hydration, albeit that this will lead to AW's death. The application is supported by AW's family, by all the medical staff who look after her, by the evidence of the expert witnesses who have reported, and by the Official Solicitor on behalf of AW herself.
The wife and son of a comatose man with an incurable disease have demanded he be kept alive. Doctors at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre have decided to withhold ventilation in the event of an emergency.
This is an application made by the NHS Foundation Trust in the Court of Protection for a raft of declarations in relation to a young man, M, who was born on 19th June 1990 and so approaches his 23rd birthday. M was tragically born with a congenital abnormality of the brain called holoprosencephaly ("HPE"). It is common ground that in the period of time since 2010 M's condition has significantly deteriorated. He is now seriously malnourished and, in the view of both the treating physicians and independent experts instructed for the purposes of this hearing, reaching the end of his life. The painful and difficult issues now to be faced by M's family, the medical team that have cared for him so diligently over many years, and ultimately this court, is to what extent should M be treated in Intensive Care or be given cardio-pulmonary resuscitation ("CPR") in the event that there is a further deterioration in his condition. There is no question of M having the capacity himself to make...