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[Ian Batten]

On 29 Jan 2008, at 21:51, James Cox wrote:

> Parents typically get carte blanche to decide what treatments their  
> kid has

 From http://cks.library.nhs.uk/knowledgeplus/medico_legal/child_protection_consent

> When a child requests medical treatment, the Clinician must address  
> wider issues of confidentiality and the competence of the child to  
> request such treatment. A child is described as "Gillick competent"  
> if he or she has "sufficient understanding and intelligence to be  
> capable of making up his own mind". The child would then be able to  
> consent to medical treatment, and parental rights will yield to the  
> child's right to make his/her own decision. The issue of  
> confidentiality is addressed in Confidentiality and record keeping  
> in the context of child protection.
> Whereas a child may be Gillick competent and have a right to request  
> medical treatment, he or she would not, however, be entitled to  
> refuse treatment.
>

I think, however, that a doctor who conspired with a parent to force  
treatment onto a clearly unwilling fifteen year old would risk finding  
their name entering into the literature.    That the name Gillick is  
invoked shows this is doctrine from within the past twenty years; the  
inverse case of a competent child refusing treatment may simply not  
yet have arisen.  I can imagine, say, a competent terminally ill 15  
year old wanting ``no 222'' on his/her notes against her parents'  
wishes being a good starting point for a row.

ian