Judge orders Jehova's Witness teen to undergo blood transfusion
Friday 19 April 2013 @ 1.23 p.m. | Legal Research
The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that the NSW Supreme Court has ruled that a 17 year-old Jehova’s Witness patient suffering a lethal form of blood cancer must undergo a potentially lifesaving blood transfusion.
The patient , known only as ''X'', is being treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma at Sydney Children's Hospital. He threatened to tear the IV needle out of his arm if doctors tried to perform a blood transfusion.
This case is interesting because the court order was made just 10 months away from when X would have turned 18, the age of consent to refuse blood products.
Court cases such as these usually involve young children whose parents have refused to consent to lifesaving treatment on religious grounds. For example, in 2010 a court overruled the parents of a four year old girl when they refused to allow her to undergo a lifesaving blood transfusion.
X told Professor Glenn Marshall that being sedated for a blood transfusion would be similar to being raped. X's father had also written a scripture reference to abstaining from blood, prohibited for Jehovah's Witnesses, on a whiteboard in X’s hospital room.
Professor Marshall, who has 20 years' experience treating children with cancer, testified that without a blood transfusion X had an 80 per cent chance of dying from anaemia.
With a blood transfusion, Professor Marshall said X would have up to a 50 per cent chance of survival.
Judge Gzell found that aside from ripping out the IV if it were possible, X and his father would otherwise follow the court order.
Supreme Court Justice Ian Gzell said in his judgment that X had been ''cocooned in faith''
''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 in his ruling. ''X is still a child, although a mature child of high intelligence.'’
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