A judge in the UK has ordered doctors to withhold life-sustaining treatment from a middle-aged Polish man hospitalized with a brain injury, despite evidence showing his improvement.
Christian Concern reports that a court order to withdraw nutrition and fluids from the patient, known as “RS”, will take effect on Jan. 7 at 4:00 pm even though the man’s condition has improved by 50 percent since last month.
Now the Polish government and the patient’s family are fighting to save his life.
The court ruling was made by Mr. Justice Cohen who is accused of ignoring medical documentation from Dr. Patrick Pullicino, also noting that he did not find Pullicino to be a “satisfactory witness” for the patient. Cohen denied requests from Poland to have RS returned to his homeland on the grounds that he might “die in transit.”
Additionally, permission to stop treatment for RS was requested by doctors at University Hospital Plymouth NHS Trust, who allege that preserving his life is “not in his best interests.”
At an earlier hearing last year, Judge Cohen claimed that RS could survive “for up to five years or more” but would never recover above a “minimally conscious state” and most likely not “acknowledge a presence of another human being.”
And the judge prevented any questions from being asked to RS’s wife by attorneys due to her emotional state. He concluded that RS “would not want to be kept alive in a state which provides him with no capacity to obtain any pleasure and which is so upsetting to his wife and children.”
But RS’s mother condemned the British courts, saying they’re making a premature decision that fails to consider her son’s Catholic beliefs on the value of human life.
“I am devastated that the British authorities have decided to dehydrate my son to death. I want to take my son back to his own country, where I would be allowed to care for him,” she said.
“What the British authorities are trying to do to my son is euthanasia by a back door.”
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