The JW will win if the SCSC follows other states' precedents. However, if the SCSC is "conservative", the fact that "Mom" gave permission might give them the "out" they need.
There are some other "interesting" factors, and statements made by this JW, who sounds as if he "smells $$$$$".
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Jehovah's witness takes blood fight to state Supreme Court
Monday, April 1, 2002
Associated Press
COLUMBIA - A stroke after a 1997 surgery led to a blood transfusion that may have saved Charlie Harvey's life.
But Harvey, a Jehovah's witness embroiled in a legal fight going before the South Carolina Supreme Court on Tuesday, sees it differently.
He was horrified to learn that he received the blood transfusion at Lexington Medical Center to unblock the carotid artery in his neck.
"I cried and cried for days," said Harvey, 55 and now a Greensboro, N.C., resident. "That wasn't their decision to make. That decision was Jehovah's - a life belongs to him."
Citing verses in the biblical books of Leviticus and Acts, Harvey said Jehovah's Witnesses believe that "blood is something sacred" and cannot be shared with others. "Life belongs to Jehovah God," said Harvey, who added he was baptized into the faith in 1995. "It should be his right to call what is sacred.
Harvey sued his surgeon, Dr. Glen Strickland, in 1998. He claimed Strickland committed a "medical battery" on him by ordering a blood transfusion and disregarded written wishes.
Harvey said he felt "guilty" when he learned about the transfusion several months later after receiving his medical records. "It tore me up," said Harvey, crying. "My rights were taken away from me. ... I feel like I was raped."
Strickland says in court papers that he ordered the transfusion after Harvey suffered a stroke following the surgery and was in danger of a heart attack.
Strickland says Harvey's mother was contacted after Harvey lost consciousness and she gave permission for the transfusion.
"The doctor saved the patient's life," said Strickland's lawyer, Charles Carpenter Jr., in a brief to the Supreme Court.
Strickland's brief says the case is about the "South Carolina law of informed consent for medical treatment," not about the "theological validity of Jehovah's Witnesses' blood view." Carpenter and Strickland would not be interviewed for this story.
In his brief, Harvey said that while his mother was listed as an emergency contact, she wasn't authorized under state law to make decisions on his behalf, especially when he had made his wishes known in writing.
Medical ethics expert Dr. Robert Sade, director of the Medical University of South Carolina Institute of Human Values in Health Care, won't talk about the legal points in Harvey's case. From an ethical standpoint, the patients' rights to determine their treatment outweighs their doctors' wishes, he said.
"If the patient really believes and understands the serious consequences that could result, you shouldn't give blood," he said.
Others have done the same. Doctors at a Rock Hill hospital allowed a mother, a Jehovah's Witness, to die in 1999 after she refused a transfusion following complications from a stillbirth.
Harvey wants the high court to send the case back to the trial judge. "I want justice to be served," Harvey said.