Thanks for the responses. I was just more surprised at his lack of decision making than anything. Obviously while in a hold, with severe weather around and being stacked with other aircraft is a big undertaking only to be made more busy with an on-board medical emergency. The aircraft eventually did divert but pretty much at the controllers direction.
As for the weather radar, I do believe that in the US, Doppler radar is overlayed on ATC controllers screen. As viewed on
www.atcmonitor.com, you can see the overlay. Not the same thing as what a controller sees, but I do think that they have a wx screen close to the controller.