A National Health Service Trust v D
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 12 July 2000 |
| Date | 12 July 2000 |
| Court | Family Division |
FAMILY DIVISION
Before Mr Justice Cazalet
Human rights - interest of patient paramount in deciding to give or withold medical treatment - approach not incompatible with human rights legislation
The interests of the patient were paramount in any decision as to whether medical treatment should be given or withheld.
There was nothing to indicate that the approach adopted by English courts when taking such decisions was inconsistent with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, even where, in carefully defined circumstances, that involved leaving a specific decision to be taken in the future by the medical team then in charge, provided always that such a course was in the patient's best interests.
Mr Justice Cazalet, sitting in the Family Division, so held when granting a declaration sought by the applicant NHS Trust that, in the event of future respiratory and/or cardiac failure or arrest being suffered by a boy now aged 19 months, the applicants should have leave to administer such treatment as excluded resuscitation through artificial ventilation but which provided full palliative care to ease his suffering and to permit his life to end peacefully and with dignity.
Mr Jeremy Hyam for the applicant; Mr David Vavrechka for the parents; Mr Andrew Hockton for the child's guardian ad litem.
MR JUSTICE CAZALET said that the child had had the misfortune, since birth, to have suffered from serious disabilities, in particular a severe, chronic, irreversible and worsening lung disease giving him a very short life expectation, coupled with heart failure, renal and liver dysfunction, with a background of severe developmental delay.
As a result of his most recent hospitalisation at the end of June with a fever and notwithstanding that he had recovered from that episode and was now back at home, the issue had arisen whether it would be in his best interests to put him on an artificial ventilator, whether manual or mechanical, and to subject him to all the processes of intensive care if, at some future time, he suffered respiratory and/or cardiac failure or arrest.
The applicants, supported by a very strong body of medical opinion, maintained that in view of his extremely poor state of health and the poor prognosis, it was not in his best interests to undergo resuscitation.
Furthermore, as his doctors had pointed out in regard to his...
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