Miraculous recovery of 4-year-old boy after High Court orders removal of life support

Image credit: Marcelo Leal via Unsplash

A 4-year-old boy has made a miraculous recovery after the UK High Court ordered the removal of his life support and to discontinue his life-sustaining treatment.

According to the Daily Mail, a 4 year-old boy, who cannot be named and is known as NR, was born with severe disabilities and is both blind and deaf. In 2023, he suffered a severe infection of the brain which resulted in two heart attacks and has since been on life support in King’s College hospital.

NR’s doctors requested that NR’s life support be removed by applying to the Family Division of the High Court. However, NR’s parents, known as Mr and Mrs R and who are devout Catholics, fought in court to allow their son to instead be moved to a Vatican-backed hospital in Italy to continue his treatment there.

The High Court judge, Mr Justice Pool, said that during the court proceedings, Mr and Mrs R told him that “it had never entered their minds to terminate Mrs R's pregnancy after they had been told of NR's congenital abnormalities following scanning” and that they think that “NR is a gift from God”, whose “life is meaningful” and who has enhanced and given meaning to their lives.

“NR continues to benefit from the unconditional love and support of his parents. Their devotion to him is deeply moving,” he said. “Their dedication to him is unquestioned and many of the clinical professionals have spoken with admiration of the parents' devotion and of the skilled care they give to their son.”

Mr and Mrs R also told him that they believed that it is “wholly unethical to bring about his death by choice,” and considered withdrawing life support to be euthanasia and discrimination on disability grounds and asked why their child should be “forced to die”.

However, Mr Justice Pool ruled that NR’s life support be removed and “other life-sustaining treatment be discontinued” saying that he should not be “forced to live” and refused permission to move him to Italy claiming it would not be in the boys “best interest”.

“[NR’s] parents' love and devotion to him is so strong that they cannot bring themselves to accept what those less personally connected to NR can see, namely that the burdens to him of treating him to keep him alive far outweigh the benefits, and that it is in his best interests for life-sustaining treatment to cease,” he said.

Last week, the Daily Mail reported that NR has miraculously improved since his life support machine was switched off in April, and has since gone home, with Mr Justice Pool reversing his decision to limit treatment after NR’s parents applied for the removal of these limitations.  

In a new report, Mr Justice Pool said that NR “has confounded all medical expectations and his case underlines the maxim that "medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability" adding that this case was “highly unusual and raises some challenging questions for the court which must be addressed openly and objectively'. 

King’s College Hospital also admitted that they would not have requested the removal of life support had NR been in the condition and circumstance he is currently in now.

Speaking on the new decision, Mrs R said: 'Our basic point is that statistics don’t help. It would be more honest if doctors acknowledged that he is an individual that medical science doesn’t really understand and isn’t a good basis for predicting what this complicated little boy can do.

“[The boy] survived when the doctors and nurses who looked after him for months thought he could not,” she added. “He has a right to life. It seems to us his will to live is strong and his life is good.”

NR’s case is the latest of a series of court cases in the UK where parents have fought for the lives of their children when doctors have attempted to end their life supports and treatments. Other cases include Indi Gregory, Archie Battersbee, Isaiah Haastrup, Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard.

Sandra Parda of the Life Institute commented saying “this is wonderful news! We are delighted that this boy has miraculously improved and is even able to go home to be with his family. As his parents say, this child is a gift and his life has meaning.”

“The problem with a society that pushes for abortion and euthanasia, particularly towards those who have disabilities, is we now have this attitude that we no longer value the human person and start treating human life as expendable. Every life is valuable, and a person with a disability should be given every care possible and every chance at life as anyone else would get.”