By FRANCESCA MOLD health reporter
A Massey University lecturer is to research ways of reducing the risk of ethical deadlocks developing between doctors and the parents of seriously ill children.
Martin Woods, a former nurse, said his project was prompted by the Liam Williams-Holloway case and several other high-profile cases where parents and doctors had clashed over medical care.
Mr Woods has spent the past year collecting data and hopes to soon begin interviewing doctors, nurses, lawyers and parents. He has suggested appointing an ethical mediator to prevent deterioration in communication between parents and medical teams, following the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness.
Mr Woods said he believed people's faith in the medical profession had been rattled after a steady stream of heavily publicised controversies.
"While many people may still expect a medical professional to make a very significant contribution to decisions in relation to treatment, there is an increasing number who no longer hold such a view."
There was also increasing interest in alternative therapy, natural remedies and the ideology of consumerism in health care, he said.
Liam's parents shunned conventional chemotherapy treatment for their son after he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma at the age of three.
They chose to pursue alternative therapy - a decision that forced them into hiding when authorities attempted to take guardianship of Liam through the courts.
The court order was eventually withdrawn. Liam died at an alternative therapy clinic in Mexico in October.
Another case resulted in prosecution for the parents of 13-year-old Tovia Laufau, who died after his bone cancer went untreated.
Peni and Faafetai Laufau were found guilty of failing to provide the necessaries of life but not guilty of manslaughter in the High Court at Auckland in August.
Tovia, who had a basketball-sized tumour on his leg when he died, became frightened while undergoing tests at Starship Hospital. He did not want to return to the hospital.
The Laufaus believed their son was mature and they decided to do what he wanted.
At the time, Starship hospital staff said they had not sought a guardianship order because of the bad publicity over the Williams-Holloway case.
A six-year-old Cook Island boy also died at Starship this year after his parents refused treatment for a brain tumour.
Mr Woods said health workers and the public needed to openly debate the issues involved in making life-and-death decisions about treatment.
He said unless people fully understood the range of viewpoints, such decisions would remain contentious and a recurring problem.
"The law, as always, may guide and regulate the actions of health care professionals, but clearly this is not enough.
"A much deeper ethical debate is required ... "
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