Doctors may be ready to break law to save lives

Some doctors may now be ready to break the law to save a child's life, the medical profession said today.

A day after a deeply religious Dargaville couple were convicted of the manslaughter of their son by refusing him medical treatment, the medical profession said doctors' ethical commitments meant some would have no hesitation in breaking the law by physically detaining parents if it meant saving a child's life.

Jan Moorhead, 45, and his wife Deborah Anne Moorhead, 34, were remanded in custody yesterday for sentencing next week in the Auckland High Court. Judge Rhys Harrison indicated they would be jailed for at least two years.

The couple, part of a radical fringe of the Seventh-Day Adventist church, took their gravely ill, six-month-old son Caleb out of Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland last year against the strongest medical advice doctors could give them.

They told doctors they would put their faith in herbal remedies and God rather than conventional medicine. As they left the hospital they were told by a nurse their baby would probably die without treatment.

The couple went into hiding in south Auckland and a fortnight later Caleb was dead from broncho-pneumonia, anaemia and brain damage caused by a deficiency of vitamin B12 which is vital for a baby's development.

Doctors believed that even up to half an hour before he died, Caleb's life could have been saved with B12 injections.

The baby was starved of the vitamin because his only source of food was his mother's breast milk. However, his parents were vegans, who didn't eat meat, fish or poultry and Mrs Moorhead's diet was seriously deficient in the essential vitamin.

Today the chairman of the Medical Association, Dr John Adams, said doctors already had the power to apply to the court to take over the care of a child when they believed parents were not making the right decisions to safeguard the health of their children.

However, he said doctors did not have the immediate power to detain parents intent on leaving a hospital with a seriously ill child desperately in need of treatment.

It happened rarely but in the Moorhead case destructive fanaticism led to their child's death.

He said some doctors were prepared to argue the law later and do what had to be done to save a child's life.

"It would be a personal and ethical decision but I suspect there would be doctors, nurses and others involved in health care who would say 'this child is going to die, no matter what the law says, we have to do something until the law can clarify this'."

Dr Adams said medical ethics were clear and medical professionals were bound to do what they could for their patients.

"I would think many doctors would say whatever the legal issues this child is dying and we have to do something to enable this child to be treated."

He said many doctors would be prepared to stand in the dock and admit they had broken the law but that a child had been saved as a result of that.

- NZPA