Doctors win but baby has chance

DOCTORS treating terminally-ill baby Luke Winston-Jones yesterday received the High Court’s permission to withhold life-saving treatment by mechanical ventilation if his condition deteriorates.

But, following a last-minute concession by the hospitals looking after him, he will still have the chance of cardiac massage, if it becomes necessary.

Lawyers for his mother, Ruth, who still hopes he will come home, said later the outcome was Luke, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder, had been given “a fighting chance”.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the High Court Family Division, made a personal plea for an end to the “conflict” which had arisen between mother and doctors in what she described as “this truly sad case.”

The judge urged Luke’s mother to accept the clinical judgment of the doctors.

She wept as the judge said: “I very much hope that she and Luke will have the longest possible peaceful and happy period together and that her view that he has as much for the future as he had in the past will be realised.”

Ms Winston-Jones, 35, from Holyhead in North Wales, accepted in court her nine-month-old son was terminally ill.

But she insisted he was “a fighter who had defied the odds” who should be allowed to fight on as she believed “the best was yet to come”.

She was anxious that Luke should not suffer pain and distress, but felt the medical profession was giving up on him too soon.

After a late concession by the trusts, the judge said cardiac massage should remain an option and “a matter for clinical judgment”.