A YOUNG man with severe learning disabilities should be given a life-saving transfusion of blood if that were to become necessary during extensive dental surgery, despite the fact that he and his mother belong to the Jehovah's Witnesses, a faith which regards transfusion as sinful. That is what Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice ruled in a judgment several weeks ago which has only just been made public.

Summarising the case rather sensitively, Sir Declan Morgan described the unnamed 26-year-old as a man who "enjoys a close and loving relationship with his mother" and was said by her to "enjoy attending church" and have "positive social contact" through church in an otherwise difficult life. But he could not take an informed decision about transfusion because under the established rules, such choices cannot be made if "the patient is unable to comprehend or retain" the necessary information. At least two articles of the European Convention on Human Rights were relevant, the judge noted: the second, which guarantees the right to life, and the third, which outlaws "inhuman and degrading" treatment. But legal precedents indicated that a treatment aimed at preserving life could not  be considered cruel.

The verdict amounts to a victory for what many people would see as common humanity, in the face of a religious taboo which every so often has tragic consequences. In 2007 a young woman in the English town of Shrewsbury died after giving birth to twins because her principles as a Jehovah's Witness prevented her from receiving blood. But last year, a high court in Dublin ruled that a woman who suffered an ectopic pregnancy should be given a life-saving transfusion, even though she and her husband were Jehovah's Witnesses and she had (as the faith recommends) signed an "Advanced Care Directive" signalling her objection to receiving most blood products. She was heavily sedated at the time of the verdict.

The Jehovah's Witnesses propagate (in every corner of the earth) a millennarian variant of Christianity, insisting that the end of the present world era is imminent and denying the Trinity—God in three persons—which for most Christians is a core doctrine. Their objection to transfusion reflects warnings against consuming blood that occur in the New Testament book of Acts, and as well as in the books of Genesis and Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures. But transfusion for medical reasons did not exist in Biblical times; this is one of the many difficulties that arise when codes of ethics that were devised for life in the pre-modern desert are applied to the 21st century.  

In Russia, reining in the Witnesses' objections to transfusion has taken a sinister turn, according to religious-freedom campaigners. In a practice that was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, a prosecutor in St Petersburg told hospitals to report, with names and personal details, any cases of people refusing blood transfusions, as possible evidence for a broad investigation of the entire sect. The Witnesses are among several faith groups which have been targeted under a Russian law that outlaws religious "extremism" in the broadest of terms. The ECHR awarded damages to two Witnesses whose privacy had been violated.
