Judge Decides Boy Should Die, But God Had Other Plans

In the UK they have socialized medicine. That means the Doctors and Judges have the authority to decide who gets what treatment. The BBC reports that Doctors decided a 4 year old boy wasn't responding to their treatments should be taken off a ventilator and feeding tubes removed. That's what they recommended to Justice Sir Nigel David Poole which would in their opinion would kill the boy within 24 hours. The boy, referred to as NR in court records, was born with severe brain abnormalities.

His parents argued that the boy had proven the doctors wrong before when they said he would never leave the hospital. He had and was living at home for years when he started failing again. If they could just keep him alive they were sure the boy would turn it around. Sir Nigel agreed with the Doctors and ordered treatment be stopped and forbade them from life saving treatments like CPR. The Judge declared in his ruling that NR was "suffering many more burdens" and there was "little to no evidence that he could derive pleasure from life, other than the consoling touch of his parents and that the investment society was making in the boy was now the equivalent of throwing good money after bad as there was no real hope of him being able to leave the hospital.

Amazingly when the boy was removed from life support he didn't die. He began breathing on his own. A short time later he opened his eyes. His parents who had been praying by his bedside celebrated. As the boy came out of his fog he eventually said "I'm hungry". The hospital wasn't allowed to feed him so his mother went to a restaurant and brought some food back for him. As the medical staff continued to wait for him to die his mother kept getting him food and a few days later they announced that they were leaving to go home.

They went back to court and got the Judge to reverse his order, because otherwise, for the rest of the boys life, he would be denied medical treatment by UK Doctors. The Judge says it was "a delight" to see the photos of NR walking in the park enjoying life. He then announced that previous periods on life support will not influence any future treatment reversing his original order so NR is again eligible to receive all available life saving medical interventions in the event of a future emergency. 


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