Vážně nemocnou dívku prohlásili za nesvéprávnou, aby nemohla podstoupit experimentální léčbu. Soud na případ uvalil informační embargo.

A 19-year-old U.K. woman with a rare disease has died during a legal fight to circumvent a ruling that she was not competent to make decisions about her care, despite her desire to go abroad for experimental treatment.

Before her death, she was conscious and able to speak. She had done well in school before her health declined after she caught COVID-19 in August 2022. Her disease did not affect brain functioning, though she suffered health problems such as impaired sight, hearing loss, chronic muscle weakness, bone disease, and chronic lung and kidney damage.

For more than a year, she had been in intensive care. She breathed using an artificial respirator, ate through a feeding tube, and underwent dialysis.

The two psychiatrists the hospital tasked with assessing ST ruled that she was free from mental health issues and had the mental capacity to decide for herself.

However, the medical professionals in charge of her treatment maintained that she was approaching, or had already begun, the final stage of her life and was “actively dying.” The NHS trust had asked the court to approve a palliative care plan for the woman that would remove her from dialysis and thus result in death by kidney failure in a few days.

In an Aug. 25 court judgment, Justice Jennifer Roberts of the High Court of England and Wales ruled that ST lacked the capacity to instruct her lawyers and said that the Protective Court should decide on her best interests. In Roberts’ view, ST was “unable to make a decision for herself in relation to her future medical treatment, including the proposed move to palliative care, because she does not believe the information she has been given by her doctors.”

“Day after day in the intensive care ward we and ST had to exist and keep going in an environment that had given up on her right and wish to live. Death, we were told, was the only remedy and the only hope,” the family said. “In such an environment, it meant we were afraid to leave her bedside and were therefore forced to give up our livelihoods to the point we now do not know how we will pay for her funeral. From this case we have learned that if you disagree with the NHS, you must for that reason alone be considered delusional. This has been deeply disturbing and traumatic to witness firsthand happening to someone you love.”

There are strict rules against reporting identifiable information about ST, her family or the hospital involved due to a court-imposed transparency order dating to March. The order came at the request of the unnamed NHS trust.

[ODKAZ]