_WORLD WATCH______________________________
____________________ France ________________

Treatment against patient’s will
Court rejects expert’s advice
One of France’s highest courts ruled in October that a doctor may take life-saving action even if the patient has refused treatment.

The Conseil d’État, the country’s highest administrative court, made the ruling in a case brought by the widow of a Jehovah’s Witness who received a blood transfusion against his explicit instructions. (Members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the Bible prohibits blood transfusions.) The patient later died.

The court ruled that “whatever their obligation to respect the wishes of a patient based on that person’s religious convictions, the doctors were not at fault.” There is no French law covering such a situation, but a government ethicist assigned to consider the case had reached a position quite different from the one the court eventually took. The expert had told the court that doctors should respect a person’s wish to refuse treatment “after having informed the patient of the consequences and having done everything to convince the patient to receive care.”

The lawyer for the plaintiff in the case, Alain Garay, said he might take the issue to the European Court of Human Rights.

Back to Catholic World Report December 2001 Table of Contents