Judges meeting children: 'Being heard

Thirty years ago, 15-year-old ‘A’ was admitted to hospital with pallor and bruising, having been taken ill on a Saturday afternoon on the football terraces, thereafter diagnosed with leukaemia. Treatment was started, but the child and his family were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses and refused to consent to a transfusion of blood products. The hospital authority sought the permission of the court1 to transfuse the boy. Blood and platelets were becoming urgently needed: his haemoglobin 4.6 g/dL, white cells 1.5, platelets 37. Evidence was adduced that with a further fall in haemoglobin, the risk to A’s life from a stroke or cardiac ischaemia might pose a greater risk than the leukaemia. For unstated reasons, the judge, Ward HHJ, visited A in hospital. He was impressed by A’s intelligence but there was ‘a range of decisions... outside his ability fully to grasp their implications’. In a conclusion that the judge...
Source: Archives of Disease in Childhood - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Clinical law for clinical practice Source Type: research