A 22-stone ex-policeman has lost his Court of Appeal fight to force a health authority to fund obesity surgery. Tom Condliff, 62, said he needed a gastric bypass operation to save his life after becoming obese due to the drugs he takes for long-term diabetes. The Stoke-on-Trent man challenged a decision by North Staffordshire PCT to refuse to fund the procedure. Court judges expressed "considerable sympathy" but ruled the funding policy did not breach human rights laws. Lord Justice Toulson, one of three judges sitting on Wednesday, said: "Anyone in his situation would feel desperate." Mr Condliff, of Talke, who has a body mass index (BMI) of 43 - not high enough under his PCT's rules to qualify for surgery - lost a High Court battle over the decision in April. But his lawyers had argued the PCT had applied a funding policy which was legally flawed and breached his human rights.
Three years ago, Trudy Moore found that her daughter, Samantha, conceived using her husband’s sperm and her sister as a surrogate, was not a genetic match to her husband. Frantic for answers, she confronted her doctor, who suggested in e-mails to Ms. Moore that he may have contaminated her husband’s sample – possibly with 3168.
English language discussions of countries in which euthanasia is, to varying degrees, legalised, or in which the courts had to pronounce themselves on the issue, even though often in the end rejecting any legalisation of active euthanasia, rarely include any mention of Colombia.1 However, a look at the legal status of euthanasia in Colombia is interesting and thought-provoking, given that, at least to this author's knowledge, Colombia is the only country in which active euthanasia was, to some extent, decriminalised by a Constitutional Court decision,2 based on human rights arguments.
A man serving a life sentence for a double murder has won a High Court victory over his right to have cosmetic surgery on the NHS. Denis Harland Roberts, 59, currently in a Co Durham jail for killing an elderly couple in East Sussex in 1989, wanted treatment to remove a birthmark. An undisclosed policy operated by Justice Secretary Jack Straw had restricted non-urgent inmate treatment. The case may mean other inmates are considered for similar treatments. However, the Prison Service said it was still "entitled to refuse escorts to hospital on grounds of risk". On Wednesday, London's High Court declared the justice secretary acted unlawfully and "contrary to good administration" in failing to disclose his full policy on medical appointments.
The Supreme Court in the US state of Montana is due to begin hearing arguments to decide if severely ill people there have the constitutional right to ask their doctor to help them die. A lower court judgement last December decided that they did, but now the state of Montana is trying to have that ruling overturned.