Jehovah's group cites alternatives to transfusions

The Jehovah's Witnesses community said it does not understand why hospitals seek court orders to overrule parental objections to blood transfusions for their children when there are alternatives.

The chairman of the Dublin Hospital Liaison Committee of the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mr Brendan O'Farrell, said "bloodless surgery" without transfusions was already practised in some Irish hospitals.The community believed that surgeons who considered they could not perform an operation on a child without using blood should refer the patient to another doctor or hospital.

Mr O'Farrell said that, alternatively, surgeons could also give an undertaking to parents to do their genuine best to carry out an operation on their child without using blood.

His understanding was that under common law if the surgeon, with the agreement of a medical colleague, found during the operation that a transfusion was necessary to save the life of the patient, the doctors would have the right to do this without going to court.

On Thursday the High Court extended orders allowing surgeons at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin to carry out heart surgery next week on a five-month-old girl whose mother had withdrawn consent.

Mr O'Farrell said a number of adult members of the community had undergone bloodless heart surgery in a private hospital in Dublin. He understood that a child requiring surgery had in recent years been referred to a hospital in the US where the operation was carried out without a transfusion.

Mr O'Farrell asked whether the motivation of doctors to seek court orders in such circumstances was to protect the hospital from litigation. He said the Constitution set the family as the fundamental unit of society and he asked what good these rights were when they could be overturned at the drop of a hat.