Hard medical choices up to parents
BOISE – When it’s a choice of taking a chance on the course of a disease or administering a risky medical treatment to a child, the parents must make the decision, not the state of Idaho, a U.S. District Judge has ruled.
Unless it’s clear-cut that it’s the safest route, the state cannot seize custody of a child to administer a medical treatment against the parents’ wishes, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said in a ruling last week.
The decision stemmed from a 2002 case in which a spinal tap was administered to 5-week-old Taige Mueller at St. Luke’s Regional Medical Center in Boise to check for signs of meningitis.
Her mother, Corissa Mueller, had brought the girl into the hospital with a fever. But when a doctor said he wanted to perform a spinal tap, Corissa Mueller objected, saying the chances her daughter had meningitis were small enough – in the doctor’s opinion, 5 percent – that she would risk it.
Spinal taps can potentially cause paralysis, infection and severe headaches.
The doctors then called the hospital social worker, who called in the police. The police seized custody of Taige Mueller, and a doctor performed a spinal tap.
The girl did not have meningitis, and she didn’t suffer any damage from the spinal tap, but her parents filed suit against the hospital social workers, the city of Boise, St. Luke’s and the police officers that seized custody of the girl.
If the state wants to order a course of treatment in a case when parents object, it needs to be able to show that no reasonable parents would turn the treatment down, Winmill wrote in the ruling.
“A difficult choice – a choice that poses risks either way – should never trigger intervention by the State,” Winmill wrote in his ruling. “With no obvious safe alternative, the State loses all claim to make decisions for the child. It is now the grim duty of the parents to make the call.”
In the case of Taige Mueller, Winmill said it was still up to a jury to decide whether police and state child protection officials reasonably believed that the girl was in imminent danger when they seized custody, or whether the doctor exaggerated the risks of foregoing treatment to get the police to seize custody.
The judge’s opinion is still a step forward, although it doesn’t decide the case, because it confirms that the state doesn’t have the authority to compel parents to submit their child to treatment they don’t think is necessary solely out of a difference of a opinion.
“The judge said the parents have a constitutional right to make these decisions on their own. The state doesn’t second-guess the parents,” said Terence Pell, president of the Center for Individual Rights, whose lawyers are representing the Muellers in the case. “We were very pleased to hear that.”
The Muellers are asking Winmill to order the state and the city of Boise to change its laws to offer more protection to parents who find themselves in similar situations.
Lawyers for the state said Winmill’s ruling is still preliminary.
“It’s being studied, and we hope everything can be resolved to the satisfaction of everybody,” said W. Marcus W. Nye, an attorney representing the state social workers. “The state is interested in trying to get the best care at the appropriate time to the people that should have it.”