Judge Refuses Patient's Right to Choose

Valley Hospital officials didn’t care that a patient refused life-saving dialysis: They weren't going to let her die. So they got a court order.

Five months later, she's alive and thriving.

The case resembles others in which a judge had to make a life-or-death decision whether or not to limit an individual's right of self-determination.

“In a situation where the hospital's own psychiatrists disagreed as to [the patient’s] mental capacity,” wrote Superior Court Judge Ellen Koblitz out of Hackensack, The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood “sought the appointment of a special medical guardian to consent to life-saving dialysis treatment.”

Her doctor told the judge his patient was “was overridden with a fear of the dialysis machine, partially because, in her view, machines that duplicate bodily functions overly intrude into God's domain.”

Koblitz, in turn, determined the woman “was incompetent to refuse dialysis treatment because she denied that she would most likely die without dialysis.“

Full Article and Source:
Judge Refuses Woman's Bid for 'Death Over Dialysis'>