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August 15, 2011 at 8:58 am 
Ed Brayton A New York state court has dismissed a wrongful life lawsuit against a doctor who saved a woman’s life by giving her a blood transfusion. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness, you see, and she doesn’t believe in blood transfusions. But her husband, also a JW, had the legal right to consent to the procedure while she was unconscious and he did. So the woman sued a doctor for medical malpractice for saving her life. The court didn’t take too kindly to the argument.
The New York Court of Appeals has ruled on several cases involving blood transfusions which alleged: disease transmitted by transfusion; failure to give a blood transfusion; delayed transfusion; giving incompatible blood; and failure to complete an interrupted transfusion in a timely fashion. But, there is no precedent for finding medical malpractice when a blood transfusion was the proximate cause of saving a life. Here, the plaintiff may be offended or even emotionally distressed that another person’s blood was transfused into her body, which is apparently not in keeping with her beliefs as a Jehovah’s Witness. Notwithstanding the fact that the plaintiff’s husband, another Jehovah’s Witness who was her health care proxy, signed a consent for the transfusion, the plaintiff’s emotional distress concerning the blood transfusion does not rise to the level of an injury, as that term is used as an element of a medical malpractice action.
Of course, if he hadn’t given her the transfusion she wouldn’t be alive to sue him for malpractice. That seems a rather obvious point in favor of the doctor.
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Thank Goodness the Doctor won – if he had lost, the next lawsuit we’d have seen would have made the headline “Emo Teenager Sues Parents Over His Conception”.
I’ll bet hubby is on rations
I’m absolutely convinced there is some sort of 180-degrees-opposite feature built into religion, so that major religious beliefs are never just slightly mistaken but instead the perfect opposite of true/factual/moral.
In this case, the phrase “wrongful life” bears it out. Gah.
“WHY didn’t you just LET ME DIE!? I am OUTRAGED!!!1!”
Religion, ladies and gentlemen!
I’ve never really looked into this area of law. So, this case has brought a whole slew of questions to mind. How much control does a spouse have over medical decisions for their partner? For example, if I have a DNR, can my spouse override it? With this transfusion case, was there anything she could have done, short of divorce, to ensure her wishes were carried out?
What about non-life saving decisions? Could a person have an unsightly mole removed from their unconscious spouse? Can a wife order a procedure to extract sperm from her comatose husband? If their places were reversed, could he order in vitro fertilization?
Looks like I’ll be doing some reading today.
There have been psychologists and sociologists who have hypothesized just that: The more ludicrous the religious beliefs, the more galvanizing they are. It might actually benefit religion to make its beliefs as preposterous as possible, because it’s a way for people to demonstrate their devotion to the group. If someone is willing to believe something that stupid, they must be really committed!
That’s interesting if true. It also seems to me that it helps the religion to have outsiders look at a believer, point their fingers, and laugh at them and call them an idiot. It reinforces that whole persecution thing that religions pull. I’ve had people claim that the existence of skeptics is proof that their religion is true, because their holy book predicts that people will scoff at their crazy claims.
Why doesn’t she sue her husband, the selfish bastard?
The magical sky god gets the credit for every positive random occurance, yet in this case the lady can’t being herself to see a miracle? Maybe the hand of Jeebus guiding the doctors’ and nurses’ hands, maybe leading her husband to go against his faith … ? I realize that in truth she is mentally ill, and/or a craven hack out for a buck, still it’s hard to follow when and how the credulous will read their gods’ Rorschach tests as signs & wonders and when they will not (the chance to get some money may offer a clue though).
Wes, I have read a similar thing about how people are gradually indoctrinated into Scientology*. The idea is that the beliefs don’t start out preposterous but do logically follow on from one another (for a given value of logic).
That way, by the time you’ve gone from A to B through most of the alphabet, you’ve arrived incrementally at a series of beliefs so outlandish that they isolate you from the rest of society. Then the only people with whom you can open up are fellow believers, who reinforce your ideas by groupthink and make you fearful to leave the fold because of the social consequences.
Seems right to me but I have no background at all in psychology. Thoughts?
*And presumably other religions, although I did hear that Hubbard specifically planned this style of indoctrination after reading about the Russian Spetznaz, who used a similar technique to condition their soldiers.
Is the husband still a JW?
I can understand the rationale for suing her husband, though I assume the result would be both the same and deserving of equal ridicule; but how was the doctor to know she didn’t want a transfusion if she was unconscious?
Abby Normal makes a good point, though it cuts both ways; how is a hospital to know when to ignore the decisions of a medical proxy? legally much safer, i should think, to take the spouse’s word for it in cases where life and death are on the line.
suing her husband for failure to properly execute his authority as proxy seems like it should have a chance of working, though. he should have known her wishes, and yet he deliberately countermanded them; perhaps there is some actionable breach of faith there? either way, that’s not likely to remain a particularly happy marriage…
I’d say that the woman has good (if insane) grounds for suing her husband–for divorce, and not the no-fault kind. Ignoring her religion-based preferences is pretty much a no-doubt situation.
What I suspect is going on here is that the woman is glad to be alive, and grateful to her husband, but at the same time, because it violated the JW’s tenets, she was forced to try to blame someone for this ‘sin’. Even having the suit dismissed won’t matter, so long as it establishes that this happened without her wanting for it.
She could have specified in her health care proxy that such proxy did not include the ability to authorize blood transfusions on her behalf.
Wasn’t this bascially the background of The Incredibles? Hero sued for saving life of suicide jumper.
My wife is a Jehovah’s Witness, and she recently filled out a little card that she put in her wallet that says she is not to receive a blood transfusion. It goes right beside her driver’s license so that when the hospital is identifying her, it’s practically impossible to miss.
Apparently the church isn’t as strict on the “no blood” thing as they used to be, and while JWs are not supposed to take whole blood, supposedly there is wiggle room to allow for partial blood products. Of course, they might just be saying that to make themselves look better to outsiders, then exert a lot of coercion to their members to prevent them from taking anything at all.
For the record, my wife has made me promise that I won’t elect to give her a blood transfusion should she ever require one and she isn’t conscious to deny one. She’s got a pretty major surgery coming up that has me worried, since that’s one promise I’m not certain I’ll be able to keep. I’d rather have a live ex-wife than be a widower, despite the fact a lot of guys I know claim that the latter is better than the former.
Well, hey, if she doesn’t like it, she can always kill herself. Whoops, that’s a sin too! Guess she’s caught between a rock and a hard place. But surely her god would forgive something she had no choice in (cough cough unbaptized children).
I think the court has rendered the correct decision here. The courts have ruled a competent adult has the right to consent or refuse treatment. This patient consented to the treatment via a proxy, her husband. How in the world are we to expect doctors to decide differently?
The pertinent point for this member of Jehovah’s Witnesses is her choice of having her husband be her voice in this case. She also does not know how she herself would have decided if given the exact circumstance and information her husband had. Her argument is based on the assumption she would resolutely refused a transfusion even if doing so meant certain death. But she does not know that, nor can her doctor or even her husband assume this would be the case. Some Jehovah’s Witnesses who have had to make this decision have decided to accept a transfusion.
This is the point, The Watchtower Society has made in these cases. This is a personal decision and should be respected by all. The statement: “Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t accept blood transfusions” is not a correct statement in all cases and certainly should not be the basis for doctors making decisions.
Do Witnesses really have personal choice here or not? A Witness who openly decides to accept a blood transfusion then does not “repent” will almost certainly face religiously enforced shunning. Members of this faith have also been repeatedly told such a choice would not be pleasing to Jehovah God and many times risks associated with blood transfusions have been highlighted in the publications. All of this brings forth serious questions of how much freedom of choice is really available in these cases.
When Greg Stafford of Elihu Books pointed out Acts 15 : 29, in context, is a carry over from OT laws on eating blood and should not be applied to transfusing blood, he stated so. He also asked for clarification from The Watchtower Society. They chose not to answer. Some Witnesses, upon considering such, have decided the sacredness of life and blood is far better shown by not eating blood (i.e. treating it in the mundane fashion as food) on the one hand and accepting a blood transfusion, when required, on the other.
-Randy
Well fuck. If she doesn’t want the blood she can always give it back.
I’ve been the blood banker during these decisions and here’s how it usually goes:
1 – An unconscious person is brought in with severe trauma and needs a transfusion to save his/her life. They get the blood.
Nobody is checking the wallet for directives because the EMTs cut the clothes off and they are in a BSI bag on the floor to be handed to whoever is going to check ID later. The cops have the wallet, it’s blood-soaked and they aren’t looking past the name and address.
As fast as ERs and trauma units can work, by the time the relatives arrive with a health care directive, they are already transfused.
2 – A minor is brought in with severe trauma and needs a transfusion to save his/her life. They get the blood. It’s easy to get a court order if needed, no matter what the parents are saying. (your religion does not entitle you to kill your child)
3 – A conscious adult needs a transfusion to save his/her life, BUT the adult declares (and preferably signs) a refusal to accept transfusions … even if they lose consciousness later, the directive holds and the hospital lets them die from the blood loss.
This would be in a situation where just fluid replacement, clotting factors and plasma wasn’t going to be enough.
I’ve only seen this once and the ER interns were freaking out. It is not unusual for JWs to accept transfusions when they know it’s the only thing that will save them.
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So be careful what’s in your health care directives – if you do not want transfusions, specifically EXCLUDE them.
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This lawsuit’s case was a bit strange, because the doc knew she was a JW, but the bleeding got way out of control and the blood scavenging equipment could not be used because the blood was contaminated with vaginal bacteria and would have caused sepsis.
So by then she was drifting into hypovolemic shock so they asked the husband for guidance and he said, “Transfuse”.
am i psychic…
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