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| Parents fight over child's right to live | |
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| Topic Started: Nov 3 2009, 12:55 AM (60 Views) | |
| Sayf Udeen Ismaeel | Nov 3 2009, 12:55 AM Post #1 |
Icon by meagan_chelsea @ LJ
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Parents fight over child's right to live
A MOTHER and father are locked in a court battle to decide whether their profoundly disabled baby should be allowed to die. The couple, who have separated amicably, have taken their case to the Family Division of London's High Court. The court was told Baby RB suffered breathing difficulties within minutes of birth last year as the result of rare congenital myasthenic syndrome (CMS ). His condition affects the communication of nerves and muscles leaving him deprived of almost all muscle movement. Since birth he has only spent a maximum of 40 minutes breathing without a ventilator, The Daily Mail reports. The little boy's brain continues to function normally. He is aware of his surroundings, he can see, hear and feel - but his muscles are so incapacitated that he can't even smile. His condition was compared to being "locked in". The hospital and the mother want one-year-old Baby RB taken off life support, saying his brain function simply worsens his plight. But the boy's father believes his son might be taken off his ventilator and returned home if surgeons carried out a tracheotomy, which creates an opening in the neck to deliver air to the lungs. He plans to show video footage of Baby RB to the court to support his case that his child should live. The Sun reported a fresh medical assessment of the boy will be carried out this weekend to determine whether he would be suitable for a tracheotomy. If the hospital is successful it would the first time that a British court has decided that life support can be withdrawn from a child who is not suffering brain damage. The hospital's lawyer Michael Mylonas said Baby RB should be allowed "a peaceful, calm and dignified death". "RB is different from a number of other children who have found themselves before this court in similar circumstances because CMS is not thought to effect his brain function at all," he said. ''The effect is that he has normal cognition and normal brain function. "Witnesses for the trust will say that the fact is that cognition will simply make his own plight all the more unbearable for him.... As he gets older he will see glimpses of what others are able to do." He said the essential regular process of "suctioning" the child's lungs, involving disconnection from the ventilator, caused pain, choking and was "akin to ones lungs simply being paralysed". Solicitors acting for the mother said she had spent every day at her son's bedside since he was born. "Every day she has seen the pain he experiences just to survive," Anthony Fairweather said outside court. Mr Fairweather said she had listened to and consulted "some of the best doctors in the world". "In her mind, the intolerable suffering experienced by her son must outweigh her own personal grief should she lose her child," he said. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26298059-401,00.html |
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| stupidstuff | Nov 3 2009, 01:19 PM Post #2 |
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How sad... ...I consider it best to end his life now. Edited by stupidstuff, Nov 3 2009, 01:19 PM.
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| Sayf Udeen Ismaeel | Nov 11 2009, 01:29 AM Post #3 |
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Icon by meagan_chelsea @ LJ
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Doctors to let sick British baby die after dispute A SERIOUSLY ill baby at the centre of a court battle between his parents in Britain will be allowed to die after his father dropped his objection to switching off his ventilator. The one-year-old's mother and his doctors wanted to switch off the ventilator keeping him alive in order to stop his suffering. Baby RB's father, who is separated from the baby's mother, had challenged this in London's High Court on the grounds that his son can still see, hear, feel and recognise his parents, but has now dropped his opposition. "All of the parties in court now agree that it would be in RB's best interests for the course suggested by the doctors to be followed,'' judge Andrew McFarlane told the court, as the baby's parents wept. "`It is, I suspect, impossible for those of us to whom such an event has not happened to do more than guess at the impact of it upon these two young parents.'' He said that the outcome was the "only tenable one for RB'' and described it as "sad but in my view inevitable''. The boy is thought to have congenital myasthenic syndrome, a rare neuromuscular condition that severely limits his ability to breathe, move his limbs or make facial expressions. He has a feeding tube in one nostril and another tube in the other nostril connected to the ventilator that lets him breathe. He has been on the ventilator since he was born in October last year. A joint statement issued by lawyers on both sides said that RB's father was now "satisfied that the benefits of further medical treatment are sadly no longer in RB's best interests''. "This has been an agonisingly difficult decision,'' it added. Expert witnesses in the court case, which has been running for just over a week, said the baby had a normal brain but an immobile body. They voiced concern that this meant he could not show if his treatment was causing him pain. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26334601-401,00.html |
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10:12 AM Nov 23
