UK
Supreme Court supports hospital withholding treatment to dying man
Wednesday,
October 30, 2013 Nicholas Tomsho
[JURIST]
The UK
Supreme Court [official website] ruled [judgment, PDF; press release, PDF] Wednesday that Aintree
University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [official website] was
justified in its decision that withholding certain invasive treatments would be
in the best interests of critical care patient David James, despite resistance
from the patient's family. James was admitted to Aintree's critical care unit
in May 2012 for an infection acquired during his treatment for colon cancer,
where he was reliant on ventilator support and suffered multiple severe
setbacks. Despite opposition from James' family, the hospital brought
proceedings to the Court
of Protection [official website] in September 2012. The hospital
sought judicial declaration that withholding the specified treatments would be
in James' best interest, pursuant to the2005
Mental Capacity Act [text, PDF; Code of Practice] provision that it may in the best
interests of a patient to withhold life-sustaining treatment "where
treatment is futile, overly burdensome to the patient or where there is no
prospect of recovery." The trial judge ruled against the declarations on
December 6, and Aintree appealed. James subsequently suffered "further
dramatic deterioration," and the Court of Appeal reversed [judgment, PDF] the decision on December
21, 2012. James died of cardiac arrest only 10 days later. Wednesday's ruling
by the Supreme Court subsequently determined that the trial judge was correct
in opposing the declarations and that the Court of Appeal was also correct in
light of the changed circumstances since the initial ruling.
The
issue of medical consent in the UK was recently addressed when the Court of
Protection ruled [JURIST
report] in August that a vasectomy was "in the best interests" of a
man with a learning disability who was unable to provide informed consent as to
the procedure. End-of-life and right-to-die issues have also been a contentious
topic in Europe. The European
Court of Human Rights [official website] ruled [JURIST
report] in May that assisted suicide laws in Switzerland fail to provide
sufficient guidelines on the extent of the right to die. In August 2012 the
High Court of England and Wales denied [JURIST
report] a paralyzed man's plea challenging laws prohibiting him from committing
suicide. In September 2011 a UK High Court judge ruled[JURIST
report] that a woman in a "minimally conscious state" due to brain
damage did not meet statutory requirements for her family to discontinue her
life support.
