Mother fails to win right to control treatment for son
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* Clare Dyer

If parents and doctors are in “grave” conflict over a child's treatment, the court must be asked to decide, England's most senior civil judge said last week.

Lord Woolf, master of the rolls, and two other appeal court judges were refusing a request by the mother of a severely handicapped boy for a declaration that doctors could not treat her son or withhold treatment from him against her will.

The judges refused Carol Glass the declaration because her son, David, aged 13, was no longer a hospital patient, having been discharged from St Mary's Hospital in Portsmouth, where she clashed with doctors over his treatment.

They said it was “inappropriate” to grant a declaration covering possible future disagreements but added that the High Court's family division could act quickly if a serious disagreement arose again.

Doctors at the hospital decided that David, who has spastic quadriplegia, blindness, and severe learning disabilities and had been admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties, should be allowed to die. He was given diamorphine, and his mother was told that he was dying.

There was a violent altercation to which police were called after members of the family stormed on to the ward and revived David. Mrs Glass objected to the administration of diamorphine, which she feared would depress his breathing.

She sought permission to challenge the doctors' decision to treat David with diamorphine and withhold life prolonging treatment against her will, without a court order. But Mr Justice Scott Baker, who heard the case in the High Court last April, decided judicial review was “too blunt an instrument” for such a sensitive case and refused to frame a declaration covering a hypothetical situation.

At least two newspapers wrongly reported that the judges ruled last week that the doctors were not acting unlawfully in treating David as they did In fact, both the High Court and Court of Appeal declined to hear the case, so the question was never argued.

Michael Wilks, chairman of the BMA's ethics committee, said: “Although it is rare that parents and doctors cannot reach agreement, if there is an irretrievable breakdown in rela-tionships or a fundamental disagreement over the way forward, the [High Court's] family division provides an appropriate forum for establishing the best interests of the child.”