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By Liz Hodgkinson | November 13, 2024 | The Conservative Woman
FOR THOSE of us who have always railed against compulsory vaccinations there is some good news at last.
A recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that vaccinations and other medical procedures may not be forced on patients against their will or in contravention of their religious beliefs.
The ruling, handed down on September 17, states that all 46 member states of the Council of Europe must recognise and respect patients’ rights to choose or decline medical interventions in line with their beliefs. It arises from a Spanish case dating back to 2018, when 47-year-old Rosa Pindo Mulla was admitted to a Madrid hospital for a routine procedure. As a Jehovah’s Witness, she refused a blood transfusion, but the hospital staff disregarded her wishes and administered donated blood without her knowledge or consent. She took the hospital to court as a result and eventually won her case.
So, one might ask, why do the Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse blood transfusions when they have clearly saved many people’s lives? I’m not a Witness expert but so far as I understand they believe quite literally in the Bible, which commands them to abstain from receiving blood or blood products from other people, as this is a sin and will lead to excommunication from their faith and, worse, eternal damnation. Most Witnesses hold to this belief, even if they may die without the transfusion.
In their defence, they point to the contaminated blood scandal, where an estimated 30,000 patients were given transfusions with infected blood in the 1970s and 80s. Around 3,000 died as a direct result and many more have lived with severe health conditions ever since. Blood transfusions, Witnesses maintain, are by no means always the miracle lifesavers that they are made out to be. From a purely medical point of view, there are inherent dangers in being given somebody else’s blood and apart from any possibility of cross-infection, the donated blood may not be an exact match.
When it comes to vaccinations, Jehovah’s Witnesses say they are not opposed to such treatments but make it clear that these shots must never be forced on them by a doctor or a government mandate. Their website states: ‘We view vaccination as a personal decision for each Christian to make.’ Once again, they point to a Biblical authority for this: Galatians 6:5: ‘For each will carry his own load.’ It is for God, they believe, not doctors, to play God.
During the worst of the covid years, the idea of patient autonomy was completely overturned. The phrase ‘no jab, no job’ came in at this time and many did indeed lose their jobs for refusing to have the jabs. Doctors and other medical personnel risked being struck off the medical register and not allowed to practise. Their principled stand could, and in some cases did, cost them their livelihoods. Non-medical people also found themselves cancelled and having their Twitter or PayPal accounts closed merely for questioning the safety and efficacy of the experimental vaccines. I also know of cases where patients have been vaccinated against their stated wishes when having an operation under general anaesthetic. One friend who had refused the covid vaccine when awake discovered later that she had been injected with it when unable to give consent during an operation. She was furious and has been ill ever since.
The new court ruling, unanimously accepted, outlaws all this and puts the patient, not the doctor or hospital, firmly back in charge, which is as it should be.* For too long we have been bullied and coerced into having medical treatments which we may not want or about which we may have serious reservations, and this goes back much further than the covid jabs.
As a case in point, when my eldest grandson was a baby, my daughter-in-law refused the MMR vaccine for him. She was threatened with removal from her doctor’s list but held out under considerable duress and was indeed struck off. Her doctor was not going to put up with a mere young mother questioning his wisdom and made it perfectly plain that he considered her to be stupid for risking her baby’s health in this way.
That unvaccinated grandson is now 24, a perfectly healthy young man who has a deep-seated scepticism about all vaccines and the extreme pressure applied to accept them. He refused all the covid shots, and when travelling to India for his job was forced to take a PCR test as he could not provide a vaccination certificate. He said that the test was extremely painful, but he was not allowed to enter the country otherwise.
We are, indeed, a family of medical refuseniks. For instance I have declined all so-called health tests, scans, screens and prescription medication and am now, as a recent octogenarian, 100 per cent healthy as far as I know. But I too have been struck off from two doctors’ lists for non-compliance and non-attendance. My ex-husband Neville Hodgkinson, who says he has not been to see a doctor for more than 50 years, is also hale and hearty at an advanced age.
Doctors and hospitals are there for us, not us for them, and they must never be allowed to override a patient’s wishes even if they genuinely consider that the patient has made a wrong or possibly life-threatening decision, as with the Spanish case. Our bodies are ours, not theirs, to play around with and experiment on.
I could not be more pleased at this important ruling, which carries considerable weight and in my view will prove to be a major game-changer in the medical profession, giving power back to the patient. Finally, the evil of forcing medical procedures on to unwilling or anaesthetised patients is illegal and any offender will be brought to justice.
*Editor’s note: While vaccinations are counted as medical treatments under the ECHR and to vaccinate people without their consent interferes with Article 8, much of this went by the board during covid on the grounds that it was considered an international emergency.
Liz Hodgkinson is an author and journalist. lizhodgkinson.com. Her new book, A Mink Coat in St Neots: My Mother’s Flower Shop and the Mystery of a Wealthy Russian Princess, will be published in November by Mount Orleans Press.