I can sympathize with the quandary the docs were in in this case. Left to the guardian to decide, the boy for sure wasn’t going to get the transfusion. Maybe they thought he’d waffle on his beliefs when facing a death sentence, but apparently the brainwashing had been too thorough.

I’ll be damned if I let the state start telling people what they do to themselves.

This was the right decision for liberty.

Why did the doctors give the boy chemo knowing he wouldn’t allow the transfusions? The answer better be that the aunt and boy agreed to the transfusions, then changed their minds. Otherwise the doctors share the blame for hastening the boy’s death.

I’m assuming this was a Jehovah’s Witness family. I don’t know much about them, but if the boy had been forced to have tranfusions then maybe his life, had he lived, would have been a living hell if blood transfusions damn you to their hell. Maybe there was no good decision here either way.

Religion sure has a lot of down sides.

Oh, that is a GREAT argument. Why aren’t 14-year-olds allowed to buy alcohol and cigarettes then?

I am all in favor of adult Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing medical care because the faster these assholes die off the, the better.

But in this case it is a minor and the guardian aunt and the judge are accessories to murder.

Disagree, the judge was right to let the decision be up to the boy. 14 years old is old enough to know the consequences.

But he did not know the consequences. He obviously thought one of the consequences of refusing care would be some sort of retribution by his mythological deity. His parents misinformed the child and the child considered their misinformation to be fact in making his decision (if in fact it was his at all). The parents a guilty of abuse of the worst kind.

Child Leukemias can often be virtually cured. I don’t know anything about the histology and stage of this child’s cancer but he may have had a good chance of long term survival. This is criminal.