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after hearing medical evidence which suggested it would be in the best interests of the child if medical support was withdrawn.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 44-year-old, a former international consultant, opted to take her daughter, 9, out of the immunisation programme run at her private school because she had reservations about the safety of the vaccine. After spending hours researching it and speaking with friends in the medical profession, she decided that not enough was known about the long-term effects of the vaccine, and that her child, who has no medical problems, should not have it.
Following advance directives in emergencies throws up some complicated problems, as Stephen Bonner and colleagues found. We asked an emergency doctor, a medical defence adviser, and an ethicist what they would do in the circumstances
Scientists have been able to reach into the mind of a brain-damaged man and communicate with his thoughts. The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method. Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world. Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage. The scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which shows brain activity in real time.
Background The differential diagnosis of disorders of consciousness is challenging. The rate of misdiagnosis is approximately 40%, and new methods are required to complement bedside testing, particularly if the patient's capacity to show behavioral signs of awareness is diminished. Conclusions These results show that a small proportion of patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state have brain activation reflecting some awareness and cognition. Careful clinical examination will result in reclassification of the state of consciousness in some of these patients. This technique may be useful in establishing basic communication with patients who appear to be unresponsive.
Doctors will be allowed forcibly to sedate the 55-year-old woman in her home and take her to hospital for surgery. She could be forced to remain on a ward afterwards. The case has sparked an intense ethical and legal debate. Experts questioned whether lawyers and doctors should be able to override the wishes of patients and whether force was ever justified in providing medical care.
A cancer patient who has a phobia of hospitals should be forced to undergo a life-saving operation if necessary, a High Court judge has ruled. Sir Nicholas Wall, sitting at the Court of Protection, ruled doctors could forcibly sedate the 55-year-old woman - referred to as PS. PS lacked the capacity to make decisions about her health, he said. Doctors at her NHS Foundation trust had argued PS would die if her ovaries and fallopian tubes were not removed. Evidence presented to Sir Nicholas, head of the High Court Family Division, said PS was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year.
We aim to improve the medical care and understanding of disorders of consciousness following an acute insult such as coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state or locked-in syndrome. Coma Science Group Cyclotron Research Center & Neurology Dept University of Liège
A controversial court that still holds its hearing in private will decide tomorrow whether a pregnant woman with learning difficulties should be forcibly sterilised once she gives birth. Health workers from a local NHS trust and council, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have asked the secretive Court of Protection to decide whether the woman should be forced to have her fallopian tubes cut to stop her falling pregnant again.
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".
The High Court has granted a Dublin maternity hospital orders allowing it to perform, if required, an emergency blood transfusion to the unborn child of a Jehovah's Witnesses couple who is at risk of being delivered prematurely. Today the court heard the child's mother, who is approximately 26 weeks pregnant, presented with a spontaneous premature ruptured membrane. Doctors at the hospital treating the woman, who cannot be identified by order of the court, say they can't predict exactly when the child will be delivered but that the likelihood of a premature birth is high. They claim in the event the child is born in the next four to five weeks the infant "most likely will require a transfusion of blood or blood related products in order to safeguard the child's life and prevent it from sustaining serious injury." However the parents, for religious reasons, have refused to give their consent to allow the hospital administer a transfusion to the child.
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 woman with "severe" anorexia who wanted to be allowed to die is to be force fed in her "best interests" by order of a High Court judge. Mr Justice Peter Jackson declared that the 32-year-old from Wales, who cannot be identified, did not have the capacity to make decisions for herself. He made public his judgment on Friday after making the ruling last month.
More than 11,000 people were deprived of their liberty last year using controversial new legislation that critics have argued is “not fit for purpose”. New figures released by the Department of Health reveal how local authorities and hospitals are increasingly relying on so-called Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard (DoLS) orders to detain people for their own safety.
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."
A cancer-stricken woman fighting a right-to-die battle against her parents won the backing of an appellate court Friday, which ruled that the 28-year-old bank manager from New York City who is paralyzed as a result of a brain tumor may decide her own fate. The emotional case has been playing out in Grace SungEun Lee’s room at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island, and on a Facebook page, Save Grace SungEun Lee, created by those who sided with family members desperate to keep Lee on life support. As word of the appellate court’s decision spread Friday, the page was swarmed with comments from people arguing for and against it, underscoring the passionate debate that surrounds the issue of individuals’ rights to choose death over terminal illness.
Doctors have been given permission to perform potentially life-saving cancer surgery on a woman who has a "delusional belief" she does not have the disease. A judge at the Court of Protection in London ruled that the treatment would be lawful and in the best interests of the 61-year-old, who suffers from chronic schizophrenia.
A lady has cancer of the uterus. She could be cured by a potentially life-saving operation. However, because of other co-morbidities and other factors there is a considerable risk that she could die during the operation or in the post-operative recovery period. She herself lacks the capacity to make an informed decision, but she denies that she has cancer at all and opposes and is resistant to the operation. The medical team at the hospital consider that she would benefit from the operation and would like to perform it. The lady's three adult sons all strongly desire that she should have the operation and feel that the potential benefit outweighs the risk. The Official Solicitor, who acts as her litigation friend, considers, in a phrase, that it is too risky. The question for the court is whether, balancing all the relevant factors, it is in her overall best interests to have the operation or not.
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.
The man’s lawyer stressed the case was not covered by the shadow of eugenics The Court of Protection could make legal history this month if it sanctions the sterilisation of a man with learning difficulties who lacks the ability to give permission.
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...
A high court has ruled that two sisters must have the MMR jab against their wishes and the wishes of their mother. The decision was made after the father of the girls, aged 15 and 11, brought the case to the High Court in September.
National clinical guidelines on the care of people in a vegetative or minimally conscious state, following severe brain injury These long-awaited guidelines will be a major contribution to clinical and ethical standards of care for this group of patients, not only in the UK but internationally. For England and Wales, they provide much needed clarity on legal decision-making. You can buy a print copy of the guidelines (130 pp, £15) from our online shop, or download a free PDF below. The guidelines were developed by a panel of experts in the field, who have organised complicated and wide-ranging information into six coherent sections: 1 Defining criteria and terminology 2 Assessment, diagnosis and monitoring 3 Acute to longer-term management 4 Ethical and medico-legal issues 5 End-of-life issues 6 Service organisation and commissioning Each section is followed by a set of clear recommendations.
Doctors believe that a terminally-ill teenager who has a brain tumour will die within weeks after a judge gave them permission to withhold treatment. The 18-year-old man’s parents wanted chemotherapy to continue and his mother had launched a “passionate” fight “for his life” at a fraught late-night hearing at the Court of Protection in London. She said her son was “absolutely adored” and a “miracle child” and urged judge Mrs Justice Hogg not to rule that he “has to die”. The judge described the case as “tragic” but she decided that specialists could lawfully stop providing chemotherapy, end “neuro-surgical intervention” and not resuscitate, after analysing evidence at a hearing which lasted more than eight hours.