Religious boy fights court for right to die

The Sydney Morning Herald/September 18, 2013

By Rachel Olding

He is a ''highly intelligent'' boy just 10 months shy of his 18th birthday but he does not have the right to make medical decisions for himself.

The Jehovah's Witness who was ordered to have a life-saving blood transfusion for cancer, despite threatening to rip the IV needle from his arm, is appealing against the court claiming he is mature enough to dictate his own fate.

Supreme Court Justice Ian Gzell overrode the wishes of the boy, known as X, and his parents when he ruled in April that he must undergo treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma at the Sydney Children's Hospital.

''The sanctity of life in the end is a more powerful reason for me to make the orders than is respect for the dignity of the individual,'' Justice Gzell said. ''X is still a child, although a mature child of high intelligence.''

The boy's barrister, David Bennett, QC, argued in the NSW Court of Appeal on Tuesday that the judgment failed to take into account how mature and competent X was and how close he was to being 18.

Despite X's doctor, Professor Glenn Marshall, giving him an 80 per cent chance of dying from anaemia if he didn't have the transfusion, Mr Bennett argued a child was entitled to a degree of decision making ''reflective of their evolving maturity''.

He referred to several overseas cases of younger Jehovah's Witnesses being allowed to refuse blood, which is forbidden in the religion, because a ''sliding scale of maturity'' known as the Gillick competency test was considered.

In most cases, the young person died like 15-year-old Joshua McAuley, who refused a blood transfusion following a car crash in England's West Midlands in 2010.

''It's easy to place very great emphasis once the word death creeps into a discussion,'' Mr Bennett said.

''But … [it] is a question of relative risk rather than a question of life or death and one has to weigh that against the fact that an adult is fully entitled to make decisions to refuse life-saving medical treatment and we are dealing with someone very close to [adulthood].''

However, the Children's Hospital said the boy had a ''cocooned upbringing'' and his family had ''little exposure to challenges of their beliefs from outsiders'' so what they may have thought was best was not necessarily correct.

''The views of many 21-year-olds … are much different to their views when they were 16 or 17,'' Jeremy Kirk, SC, told the court.

On a whiteboard in his hospital room, X's father wrote a scripture reference to abstaining from blood.

The boy told Professor Marshall that being sedated for a blood transfusion would be akin to being raped. He has since had three unsuccessful cycles of chemotherapy at a lower dose.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.