Judge bans family from treating 23-year-old son in induced coma homeopathically

A 23-year-old man from Spain entered in a coma following a cardiorespiratory failure mid-surgery, and local justice is forbidding his relatives from treating his condition with alternative medicine.

According to a December 27 report from Spanish news outlet El País, a local judge in the country’s capital, Madrid, has banned the family of the patient from giving him a homeopathic treatment.

Francisco C.R. suffered complications during an appendicitis intervention and became unresponsive, leaving the medical team no other option but to induce him into a coma and send him to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

When the staff at the Fundación Jiménez Díaz medical center refused to allow his family to administer him with homeopathic substances, the family took the case to court. Read more on our Twitter account @amomama_usa

The doctors strongly opposed to the family’s attempts to treat C.R. themselves and denied his relatives access to the ICU, with the National Police being called to the scene and supporting the staff’s decision.

The judge has ruled in favor of the hospital, preventing the family from using their alternative choice of treatment for C.R.’s very serious condition.

According to the medical journal Health, the debate about the legitimacy of homeopathy is over, and they cite several scientific verdicts to prove this point.

The judge considered homeopathic treatment to be "non-curative" and that "it would not help at all" to improve the patient’s health.

In turn, the family also reported that the cardiorespiratory arrest was due to the anesthetist's negligence, a fact about which the magistrate did not comment, leaving the door open for the relatives to take the legal actions they deem appropriate.

Following the judge’s decision, the family has three days to appeal on the case, and apparently, they are going to try to put on a legal fight in order to do what they think is best for C.R.

The scientific community at large has set out to prove on several occasions that homeopathy is not a valid medical treatment, calling it pseudoscience.

According to the medical journal Health, the debate about the legitimacy of homeopathy is over, and they cite several scientific verdicts to prove this point.

This family is far from the only one involved in a legal battle with the medical establishment over the right to decide how to manage a health condition according to their own terms, convictions, and beliefs.

In Long Island, New York, the mother of a 13-year-old with a deadly form of leukemia has taken their case to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt her child’s chemotherapy treatment, claiming that he is already in remission.

The court has denied the family the right to do this, with doctors insisting that the patient needs 40 more months of chemotherapy. The child has stated that he supports his mother’s decision.