DEATH IS IN CHARGE OF THE CLATTERING TRAIN

High Court gives doctors right to let baby Luke die (Sally Pook, The Telegraph, October 22nd, 2004)

Doctors treating a terminally-ill baby with a rare genetic disorder won the right yesterday to deny him life-saving treatment.

Luke Winston-Jones, eight months, has never left hospital and cannot recover from his illness, but his mother asked the High Court to rule that doctors must resuscitate her son if his condition deteriorates. His doctors said he should be allowed to die.

Yesterday, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss said it was not in Luke's best interests to resuscitate him by putting him on a ventilator, although she said doctors should still try to revive the baby using heart massage if they believed it was right to do so.

She gave her judgment less than 10 minutes after the hearing ended, and told all the parties they should now "turn over a new leaf". In particular, she told Luke's mother, Ruth, that she must now accept the judgment of her son's doctors and try to reduce the areas of conflict between them.[...]

Dame Elizabeth, the president of the High Court family division, ruled yesterday that doctors were legally entitled not to put Luke on a ventilator. She said the procedure carried the risk of the baby then becoming dependent on a ventilator, which would deprive him of his close relationship with his mother during the last weeks or months of his life. His life "would not be worth living", the judge said.

As the judge can’t possibly know what Luke’s life would be like or what he might make of it, surely what she is really saying is that, if she were his mother, she can’t imagine how her life would be worth living. Rumpole used to recall bitterly how old-fashioned judges retired for “double muffins” after pronouncing a death sentence. The modern ones bask in the pride of having done the dead baby’s family such a big favour.