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Marc Cornock discusses how a 13-year-old girl informed the legal process of consent when refusing life-saving treatment
Summary
The case of Hannah Jones hit the national news in the UK with headlines proclaiming that a young girl had been allowed to make an end of life decision. The case raises the question of whether someone of Hannah's age should be allowed to make decisions about end of life treatment. However, as this article demonstrates, this case involves nothing more than the consent process in action, and that Hannah merely exercised her legal rights on consent and treatment.
Keywords
Consent to treatment, children: rights, law
THIS ARTICLE examines the legal process of consent and the child and uses the case of Hannah Jones to illustrate the points being made. The article does not undertake a full examination of the ethical basis of consent or of the rights of the child to consent. There is no issue of possible breach of confidentiality about discussing the aspects of this case, as the details are freely available in the public domain. Hannah Jones herself provided details of her condition and the consent process in her interviews with the media (De Bruxelles 2008a).
Hannah Jones was, in November 2008, a 13-year-old girl who was in need of a heart transplant. This had arisen as a result of chemotherapy she had received at the age of five, when she was diagnosed with leukaemia. The chemotherapy had resulted in a weakening of her heart which had become more problematic as she grew, such that she was said to have only 10 per cent functioning of her heart, a condition that left her breathless. As she continued to grow her heart would be unable to cope, and without a heart transplant she would die.
Hannah had been informed that a heart transplant was not without complications, may not be a success and, if it was successful, she would need immunosuppressant medication to prevent the rejection of the donor heart. She was also warned that it was possible that the immunosuppressant treatment might lead to a recurrence of her leukaemia, and that she may need another heart transplant at a later date (De Bruxelles 2008a).
Hannah made a decision not to proceed...