A 16-year-old boy who suffered brain damage after an apparent suicide bid should be allowed to die, a High Court judge has ruled. Mrs Justice Morgan has concluded that ending life-support treatment is in the best interests of the teenager, who has been in a hospital intensive care unit for many months.
The judge outlined the detail of her decision in a written ruling published on Tuesday (March 14) after considering the youngster’s case at hearings in the Family Division of the High Court in London. She described what had happened as a “tragedy”.
She said the teenager was found unresponsive at home nearly two years ago after “what it seems was an attempt to take his own life”. Doctors said he had suffered “severe global brain damage”.
Specialists said there was no prospect of improvement and hospital bosses had asked Mrs Justice Morgan to rule that doctors could lawfully stop providing life-support treatment. The youngster’s father wanted him to be given “more time”.
Mrs Justice Morgan said: “I accept the overwhelming and unified medical views of those who have cared for so long for (him) and of those who have provided second opinions as to his situation. It drives me to the inevitable conclusion that he has no prospect of improvement with treatment or, as his father urged me to consider, with more time.”
She added: “I cannot, on all that I have heard and read, regard it as a neutral step to leave (him) as he is, against the prospect that, as his father hopes, medical science may evolve and next year there may be something that can be done for him.”
Mrs Justice Morgan said evidence suggested that the teenager could not breathe, communicate, hear or see. The judge went on: “He appears to have no awareness of his environment, no purposive movement, no response to tactile stimulation.” She said what had happened was a “tragedy” for the teenager and a “tragedy for all who love him”.
The teenager’s mother “neither consents (to) nor opposes” the hospital bosses’ application, Mrs Justice Morgan had been told.
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Mrs Justice Morgan had initially considered the case in early December. The teenager’s mother had persuaded her to delay decisions until the new year so she and her other children could have “as normal and as peaceful” a Christmas as possible.
Mrs Justice Morgan said the teenager could not be identified in media reports of the case and she has not named the hospital involved, or its governing trust.
