Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2000
Abstract
IN Re C (A CHILD) (HIV Test) [1999] 2 F.L.R. 1004, a local authority applied for a specific issue order to test a four-month-old baby girl for HIV. The mother of the child first tested positive for HIV in 1990, but adopted a highly sceptical stance towards generally accepted theories about HIV and AIDS, and refused conventional therapy for herself, preferring to rely on a healthy lifestyle as a prophylactic. The case arose when the baby's physician became aware not only that the mother was breastfeeding the child (despite the risk of transmission of HIV), but that the parents refused even to have their daughter tested for the virus in the belief that a healthy lifestyle was the optimal treatment even if she were HIV-positive.
Recommended Citation
S. I. Strong,
Case and Comment: Between the Baby and the Breast, 59 Cambridge Law Journal 259
(2000).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/facpubs/858