By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - General - Baby's right to life appeal fails.

SamuelRSmith on 20 March 2009

Parents battling to keep their seriously ill baby alive have failed to overturn a ruling allowing him to die.

The nine-month-old boy has a rare metabolic disorder and has suffered brain damage and respiratory failure.

The couple had appealed against a judge's ruling on Thursday that it was in the boy's best interests to withdraw his "life sustaining treatment".

The High Court ruling gives doctors at an unnamed NHS trust powers to turn off the ventilator keeping "baby OT" alive.

Two Court of Appeal judges refused the couple permission to challenge a decision by Mrs Justice Parker made after a 10-day hearing.

Neither the baby, the trust involved in the case, nor the parents - Mr and Mrs T - can be identified.

Lord Justice Ward was told the couple had decided to wait outside the courtroom while the ruling was given as they could not face hearing the decision.

The judge acknowledged the hearing seeking permission to appeal had been conducted "in a brusque, uncaring, unfeeling way on a crude issue of law".

But he said he would like to have addressed them personally and asked their lawyers to pass on the message that it was impossible not to feel the "deepest sympathy for their predicament".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7956173.stm

---

I personally don't have that strong of a feeling towards this, but I know that this can lead to quite the debate, so I posted it.



Around the Network
Kasz216 on 20 March 2009

Question. Had they wanted to, could they have kept the baby alive if they paid of it our of pocket?

That pretty much will decide my opinion on it.



SamuelRSmith on 20 March 2009
Kasz216 said:
Question. Had they wanted to, could they have kept the baby alive if they paid of it our of pocket?

That pretty much will decide my opinion on it.

 

One assumes that they could have gone through it privately, keeping the child alive for as long as they could afford.



Kasz216 on 20 March 2009
SamuelRSmith said:
Kasz216 said:
Question. Had they wanted to, could they have kept the baby alive if they paid of it our of pocket?

That pretty much will decide my opinion on it.

 

One assumes that they could have gone through it privately, keeping the child alive for as long as they could afford.

Then I don't really have a problem with it... assuming they could go around it with their own money once they found out the decision.

No worse then the US In that case.  Well I guess you have less money because of the socialism but still.

 



akuma587 on 20 March 2009

I mean this is a tough issue. There isn't really a decision they can make that is "good" or will please everybody. Either decision will have big consequences.



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

Around the Network
jv103 on 20 March 2009

Always interested in when the state makes a decision like this. Of course, people are naturally selfish and want to cling to things. I understand the parents want. Who wants to let go of a child. On the other hand (kind of like that Schiavo case) I understand that it becomes rather selfish after a period.

Of course, I'm against the idea of the state interceding but would like to see more people make this decision on their own. Do they want to continue on the current course simply to prevent their own pain?



TheRealMafoo on 21 March 2009

I have no problem with it. It's not a ruling that says the someone has the right to kill the baby, it just says that the hospital no longer is obligated to keep it alive.