If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Aged 16-25? Share your experience of using the discussion boards and receive a £25 voucher! Take part via text-chat, video or phone. Click here to find out more and to take part.
Comments
Haha this is why i never post in debate, i always start out trying to hit the point, but end up going somewhere completely unrelated
I guess the only other area of contention is whether you consider the possibility of saving someone who didn't want to be saved to be more of an infringement than letting someone die who didn't want to die. Because one of them is going to happen. Of course at least you won't hear about the latter.
Informed consent is directly related to the individuals ability to understand the treatment being offeredm it's benefits and risks.
Whether a person refuses because they don't want the risks, don't believe that the benefits will meet their needs or believe that the treatment is against any moral beliefs is irrelevant. If they are considered capable of understanding the implications of refusal to treat, then they can refuse.
If we didn't apply those rules then a doctor could do whatever he wanted, and that is step much further than the one being claimed about here.
In this case there isn't an age limit, but a capacity limit. Incidentally the criminal responsibility limit is 10.
Ridiculous in your opinion because you've been taught something different.
The doctors approach in this case will not have been based on a ten minute chat. Not only will the doctor have spent ages with the imdividual but there will have been hours of discussion with the parents and legal advisors.
Actually, I'd argue it's you that is trying to suggest it's easy. Your argument is based on the premis that anyone who belives that transfusion is wonrg shouldn't be allowed that choice and should automatically be considered incapable of giving informed consent.
I disagree. I'd argue that each case should be considered on it's own circumstances and there is no reaons to make any automatic judgements.
The basic way it works is that all people of 16 and over are considered to be old enough to make judgements about their own medical treatment unless something prevents this ability. This would be judged the same for a 16 year as it would be for a 40 year old.
Below 16 a Doctor is required to decide if the young person is legally competent to make a decision about their own treatment. The wording for this is -
The courts have determined that such children can be legally competent if they have "sufficient understanding and maturity to enable them to understand fully what is proposed".
This is the Gillick competency - the legal decision which allowed an under 16 year old to be allowed to receive contraception without a parent's consent.
An overview of this very important case is available on wikipedia, it's pretty much as important to the UK as laws such as Roe vs Wade are to the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillick_competence
You can see the full 1985 judgment here -
http://www.hrcr.org/safrica/childrens_rights/Gillick_WestNorfolk.htm
And Patient UK has a really good overview of how medical consent for children and young people works in the UK. I've pretty much shamelessly cribbed it here -
http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/Consent-to-Treatment-in-Children.htm#ref6
And this has been slightly complicated by the recent changes to the Children's Act requiring Doctors to inform Social Service or Crisis team's about particular damaging behaviour - but that's about child safety not about consent.
Of course that doesn't go to the original point - which is whether religious belief should be seem as a personal choice and human right or something that interferes with a young person's (or anyone's) competence to make a medical judgement.
But figured it might be helpful to try and bring some clarity to the issue of medical consent for under 18s in the UK.
Also be worth remembering that the lad's parents haven't made any comment so far about what happened. So worth being careful about any judgment of how they feel about this.
Of course I can decide if its misguided. It's my opinion and I'm entitled to have it. Otherwise you can extend that argument to almost anything and no-one would ever take action about anything. Personally, if I had was still at his age, I may well have taken his route in religious conviction. But just a few years later, now that I am more mature and perhaps somewhat more cynical, my decision is that there is no personal god and I would take the blood transfusion. In my opinion, he has died for nothing.
They have to look at the person in front of them. If, at the moment consent is required, he is deemed competant then that's enough. The fact that his opinion may change in five years time is irrelevant.
I know what you're saying but I am still entitled to an opinion and even, in this case, disagree with the state. The state only allows doctors to let him die because there is no law against it (presumably). And opinion/debate does help to change things for the better in society. This boy can't legally drink, or drive a car, and is not allowed to view 18+ movies etc, but he can make a decision for himself based on something completely intangible that will likely lead to his death? You can bet I have the right to debate that!
Personally, I'd like to see 21 - but I'd compromise on at least 16.
That is the crux of the debate - do you want to ban any one access to the pill, or support for self-harm without their parents consent. Wouldn't that mean that someone under 16 was entirely constrained by their parents religious views. Far more commonly than this extreme situation...
For now.... this website is quite helpful in explaining the ethics of medicine.
http://www.ethics-network.org.uk/ethical-issues
:yes:
I'd far rather we stick with the system we have... with Gillick competency, Fraser guidelines and fair rules on confidentiality for under 18/16s. If the system were to be changed, we couldn't have it both ways, and many more young people (i believe) would suffer as a result.
I think its a shame that this boy died, but he held certain beliefs which we don't really have much of a right to question. I mean sure, his upbringing may have had something to do with it, but not all children who have parents as Jehovah's witnesses share their beliefs. And his beliefs were tested in probably one of the most extreme of situations; life or death. And in that situation he stuck by them, so OK.... yeah his beliefs may have changed later in life, but at that time, he was willing to die for what he believed in, which I think says a lot. And I'm not sure, but I think it would take a hell of a lot of "brainwashing" to achieve that.
If you leave the Jehovah's Witnesses, you are ostracised from the family and their community. Few would be brave and insistent enough to lose those ties.
None of the above usually lead to death. This is far more important.
If you break the right of consent for cases where someone might die, as opposed to their general right of consent, then are you reaching a point where, for example, a young person wouldn't have the right to refuse treatments for conditions that may kill them. That could include possibly terminal illness and many other conditions.
I just really worry about starting to say that a doctor gets to decide when consent applies and when it doesn't. Medicine isn't an exact science, a doctor may think with a treatment it could be a 1 in 3 chance, without 1 in 10.
At that point you're asking him to decide whether or not to override the patient's personal views based on a guess. What if 2 surgeons think it's a better chance than 2 others, which 2 do you go with.
It seems that for all the tragedy this case represents, and it is really difficult to read about, isn't the alternative dehumanising the rights of a person under 16?
Removing the clear rules around consent would seem to lead to a situation where you're saying that a 14 or 15 year old no longer has the right over their own body, that a doctor can make that judgment over a sane and reasoning person.
And removing that right of consent could open the door to many less serious situations where a doctor or parent could control the body and medical treatment of a young person, against their wishes.
It seems to me it's a horrible situation but it's the ultimate consequence of rightly deciding that reasoning people do have the right to decide how their body is treated.
Or, indeed, how they came to that particular conclusion.
However, I am hoping I've not killed the debate
I kind of hope that you have but then that's because I agree with you :thumb:
For me the informed consent issue is sacrosanct for many of the reasons you have said. The minute we put an age limit on soneome ability to give informed consent then we harm many of those who need the protection that patient confidentiality gives - expecially for those youngsters needing terminations and/or birth control. We limit a child's ability (in cases like this) to over rule their parent religious or moral beliefs. Gillick gives us a method of assessing that ability.
If we then also argue that someone's religious belief reduces their ability to give informed consent then we enforce our moral or religious beliefs on them and I could never sanction that.
What the current system gives us, is the protection from having surgical interventions carried out on us regardless of our wishes - when we are deemed mentally capable of refusing - or from consenting when our next of kin don't want us to.
The problem here, with this thread, is that people seem to think that their moral values should affect how others are treated. Doctors cannot do that and that's something which we try very hard in the health service to uphold. Staff that object to terminations, for example, opt out of taking part in those proceedures and are required to refer the patient to someone who will do it - they cannot simply refuse to have anything to do with it.
It's not, and should never be, the doctors morals that decide whether a person has surgery. It should be the patient's.
Surely this is already done though? If a person goes on about their dead friend or relative coming back to life, it is used as evidence of their insanity/mental instability but, if it's some bloke from Bethleham it's suddenly alright? Isn't that then a judement that doctors make based on their own beliefs?
Not the only one I can see, but one I agree with.
If it is the same bloke from Bethlehem that I am thinking of, I heard that there were several witnesses that substantiated the original claim.
There are far more witnesses that Derren Brown predicted the lottery. But he still didn't.
If you were clearly insane then you wouldn't be asked for consent, your next of kin would.
ETA. Hang on, please tell me that you aren't suggesting that insanity and religious belief are the same thing.
Great! And then if they are Jehovah's Witnesses, they can decide to let you die instead. Hurrah! :yippe:
Does that depress you ?