High Court rules that 14 year old Jehovah’s Witness should have blood transfusions

A High Court judge has given the go-ahead for doctors to give blood transfusions to a 14 year old Jehovah’s Witness boy after hearing that he would be “angry and upset” but wanted to survive.1

The teenager, referred to as CX, has survived lymphatic cancer 10 years before but now has a different form of lymphatic cancer, which is at stage IV.

He is under the care of a team of paediatric oncologists, but the court heard that the literature contained no case reports of a patient who had had both of these forms of lymphatic cancer. In the absence of guidelines or treatment protocols his doctors had consulted widely in the UK, continental Europe, and the US.

The court case was brought …