X-Message-Number: 14093 Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 22:24:14 -0400 From: Jan Coetzee <> Subject: Judge orders doctors not to revive sick Judge orders doctors not to revive sick baby London - A British judge has ruled that doctors should not prolong the life of a 19-month-old boy suffering from irreversible lung disease, rejecting a plea from the child's parents in a ground- breaking ruling, press reports said on Thursday. The ruling is believed to set a precedent and was condemned last night by the parents and by anti-euthanasia campaigners, who said it placed vulnerable patients at even greater risk. Doctors said the boy was likely to die within weeks. The judge said that hospitals should provide him with "palliative care to ease his suffering", but should not try to revive him as that would cause further unnecessary pain. Anti-euthanasia campaigners opposed the ruling. "This incredibly irresponsible judge has created a monstrous precedent which must be reversed immediately for the protection of all vulnerable patients whose lives are now ever more at risk from doctors who kill and then hide behind the medical profession's code of secrecy," Julia Quenzler of SOS told the Times. Gerard Wright, a senior lawyer with Alert, another anti-euthanasia group, said: "I am astonished that the judge should make a decision of this kind. It sets a dangerous precedent because it is all too easy for doctors to say there is no point fighting any longer." The court was told that when the boy was born prematurely he was found to be suffering from severe and irreversible lung disease as well as a brain abnormality, giving him a very short life expectancy. Britain's National Health Service has been hit by a series of scandals this year, including widespread allegations that junior hospital doctors are taking decisions not to resuscitate elderly patients without consultation with the families concerned. There have also been several criminal cases involving the murder of elderly patients, the rape of women by using anaesthetic drugs and the sexual molestation of young men. - Sapa-DPA Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14093