Doctors from Sydney Children's Hospital made an urgent application to the Supreme Court to help save a 17 year old boy with Hodgkin's Disease, a potentially fatal blood cancer.
Justice Gzell overruled the boy's wishes, that as a devout Jehovah's Witness, he would not be forced to have a blood transfusion. He threatened to rip the IV out of his arm, leaving doctors with no other choice but to sedate him.
The judge said "The sanctity of life in the end is a more powerful reason for me to make the orders than is respect for the dignity of the individual."
Doctors initially respected the boy's wishes and he was treated with chemotherapy but the tumours in his lungs, spleen and lymph nodes still remain. His doctor, Professor Glenn Marshall, told the court that he needed a higher dose of chemotherapy which would make him anaemic and he would then need a blood transfusion, without it, he had an 80 per cent chance of dying.
The boy told Professor Marshall that being sedated and given a blood transfusion against his will would be like being raped and when he turns 18 later this year, as an adult, he will stop further transfusions.
His father has written a scripture from the Bible on a whiteboard in his room which refers to the Jehovah's Witness creed forbidding blood products.
The arrogance of this religious cult astounds me. They believe that when Armageddon comes, only Jehovah's Witnesses will be saved, the rest of us will be wiped out. Meanwhile, courts continue to overrule parents who deny their child the right to a life-saving blood transfusion, something I will never understand.
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