LIFE NEWS/ Wesley Smith-
Medical authoritarianism continues to expand in the U.K. Readers may recall the cases of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, infants with catastrophic illnesses whom the courts did not allow to be taken out of their hospitals — as desired by their parents — to receive treatment elsewhere.
Now, a conscious and capable 19-year-old patient, referred to in legal documents as “ST,” with an apparent terminal disease has been told by a court that she can’t decide to continue life-extending treatment after the hospital sued to be able to move her to palliative care against her will. From the legal ruling involving the National Health Service Trust (my emphasis added):
The Trust’s case is that ST is “actively dying”. It became clear during the course of the oral evidence I heard from Dr A, the consultant leading her care on the ITU, that this assessment does not mean that her death is necessarily imminent. She may have weeks or even months to live. The exact prognosis is uncertain. What is clear from clinical observation is that she has progressive respiratory failure with episodes of acute exacerbation resulting in breathlessness, distress and agitation. The current care plan is based upon the withdrawal of haemodialysis although ventilation will continue.
ST is aware of this but wants to keep fighting for her life. Again, from the ruling, by the justice presiding over the case:
Despite all the difficulties which currently confront her, ST is able to communicate reasonably well with her doctors with assistance from her mother and, on occasion, speech therapists. Over the course of the last week she has engaged in two separate capacity assessments. I heard evidence from two consultant psychiatrists whose conclusions in relation to her capacity in both domains are set out in full written reports. . . .
She has been described by those who know and love her as “a fighter”. That is how she sees herself. At the heart of the issues in this case is what ST and her family perceive to be a ray of hope in the form of an experimental nucleoside treatment outside the United Kingdom which might offer her hope of an improved quality of life, albeit a life which is likely to end prematurely in terms of a normal life expectancy. She has told her doctors that she wants to do everything she can to extend her life. She said to Dr C, one of the psychiatrists who visited her last week, “This is my wish. I want to die trying to live. We have to try everything”. [Court’s emphasis] Whilst she recognises that she may not benefit from further treatment, she is resistant to any attempt to move to a regime of palliative care because she wants to stay alive long enough to be able to travel to Canada or North America where there is at least the prospect that she may be accepted as part of a clinical trial. . . .Continue reading…
