Woman who refused to accept son had died loses legal battle after judge rules he is dead

'I think there is still an element of life. There are responses. What is there to lose?' said the woman in the hearing

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A woman who could not accept her son had died after a lengthy illness has lost a High Court fight to keep him on life support.

The woman’s son, 22, spent two years in and out of hospital as doctors struggled to identify the cause of his illness.

He eventually ended up in the care of the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust in Greater Manchester and slipped into a coma after his brain became damaged due to the illness.

Specialists decided he was dead earlier this week, but his mother thought “there is still an element of life” in him.

“There are responses,” she told Mr Justice Hayden at the hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

“What is there to lose?”

The man’s mother wanted specialists treating him to consult a foreign doctor researching cell regeneration before ending his life support.

But a specialist treating the man said cell regeneration would not help and his body would begin to decay.

Bosses at the Salford Royal NHS Foundation had asked the judge to rule that he was dead.

Mr Hayden paid tribute to the care the man had received from medics, and also praised the parents for the courage they had shown.

“He wanted to be a marine,” said Mr Hayden.

“He showed all the courage which makes it easy to see why he would have wanted to be a marine.”

The man, who had worked as a landscape gardener and lived in north England, could not be identified in media reports until his parents had been given time to grieve, said the judge.

Additional reporting by agencies