Doctors were forced to allow a young woman to die as she had made a "living will" requesting no medical help if she attempted suicide. They would have risked breaking the law by treating Kerrie Wooltorton, 26, of Norwich, an inquest heard. Miss Wooltorton wrote her living will in September 2007, asking for no intervention if she tried to take her own life.
Sir Terry Pratchett has said he's ready to be a test case for assisted suicide "tribunals" which could give people legal permission to end their lives. The author, who has Alzheimer's, says he wants a tribunal set up to help those with incurable diseases end their lives with help from doctors. A poll for BBC One's Panorama suggests most people support assisted suicide for someone who is terminally ill.
Doctors will be allowed forcibly to sedate the 55-year-old woman in her home and take her to hospital for surgery. She could be forced to remain on a ward afterwards. The case has sparked an intense ethical and legal debate. Experts questioned whether lawyers and doctors should be able to override the wishes of patients and whether force was ever justified in providing medical care.
A cancer patient who has a phobia of hospitals should be forced to undergo a life-saving operation if necessary, a High Court judge has ruled. Sir Nicholas Wall, sitting at the Court of Protection, ruled doctors could forcibly sedate the 55-year-old woman - referred to as PS. PS lacked the capacity to make decisions about her health, he said. Doctors at her NHS Foundation trust had argued PS would die if her ovaries and fallopian tubes were not removed. Evidence presented to Sir Nicholas, head of the High Court Family Division, said PS was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year.
The 30-year-old, known only as SB, could die without emergency treatment for aplastic anemia, a condition in which her bone marrow does not reproduce enough new blood cells. The Court of Protection has now ruled that doctors can restrain SB and force her to undergo the arduous but potentially life-saving treatment, which is administered through a vein in the heart and lasts for five days. SB has been detained under the Mental Health Act. Family Division judge Mrs Justice Hogg ruled that the patient did not have the capacity to make up her own mind over whether to undergo the treatment.
A high court judge in England has ordered that doctors can force a woman without the capacity to decide for herself to have lifesaving treatment for aplastic anaemia. Mrs Justice Hogg made the ruling in the Court of Protection after an unnamed NHS trust applied to the court with the backing of the Official Solicitor, who looks after the interests of those lacking capacity. The judge said the 30 year old woman, named only as SB, who is detained under the Mental Health Act, has a serious psychiatric disorder and lacks the capacity to decide for herself whether or not to have the potentially lifesaving treatment.
A controversial court that still holds its hearing in private will decide tomorrow whether a pregnant woman with learning difficulties should be forcibly sterilised once she gives birth. Health workers from a local NHS trust and council, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have asked the secretive Court of Protection to decide whether the woman should be forced to have her fallopian tubes cut to stop her falling pregnant again.
A woman with "severe" anorexia who wanted to be allowed to die is to be force fed in her "best interests" by order of a High Court judge. Mr Justice Peter Jackson declared that the 32-year-old from Wales, who cannot be identified, did not have the capacity to make decisions for herself. He made public his judgment on Friday after making the ruling last month.
A lawyer who advised doctors that they must let a 22-year-old Jehovah's Witness die even though he wanted to live has spoken of the agonising scenes before the young man's death.
The family of a man left in a vegetative state after a heart attack has made an eleventh hour appeal for doctors to do all they can to keep him alive as they await a vital court ruling. Tomorrow, the court of protection in London will be asked to rule in a dispute over whether it is in "the best interests" of the severely brain-damaged man, who is from the Greater Manchester area, to continue to receive life-saving treatment if his condition deteriorates. Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust claim it is not in the best interests to offer the man, known only as L, ventilation or resuscitation if his condition worsens and he suffers "a life-threatening event", such as another heart attack. But his family disagree and say they, not the trust, must be given the right to decide on his care.
A High Court judge has ruled in favour of an NHS trust that force feeding would not be in the "best interests" of an anorexic woman. Mrs Justice King, at the Court of Protection in London, heard that the 29-year-old woman, who weighs about 3st 2lb (20kg), does not wish to die. She ruled "all reasonable steps" should be taken to gain the woman's co-operation, without "physical force".
When your time comes to die, you probably hope that you will be surrounded by loving family members and friends who will support you and help you leave this earth at peace with one another. Sadly, for 28 year-old SungEun Grace Lee, who is dying in a Long Island hospital, Rather than suffer a slow, miserable death, Grace has requested that doctors take away the life support. After determining that she was mentally competent, doctors at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., prepared to shut off her life support. But her parents did not agree.
An international leader in bioethics, Peggy [Battin] explored the right to a good and easeful death by their own hand, if need be, for people who were terminally ill, as well as for those whose lives had become intolerable because of chronic illness, serious injury or extreme old age. She didn’t shy away from contentious words like “euthanasia.” In the weeks after the accident, Peggy found herself thinking about the title character in Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan Ilyich,” who wondered, “What if my whole life has been wrong?” Her whole life had involved writing “wheelbarrows full” of books and articles championing self-determination in dying. And now here was her husband, a plugged-in mannequin in the I.C.U., the very embodiment of a right-to-die case study.
New report finds half of dying Britons are not dying well At a pivotal time for end of life care in Britain the need for advance care planning is reinforced Divided in Dying, a new report from charity Compassion in Dying, finds that almost half of those who have lost someone close to them through a short or long illness, feel their loved one died badly (45%). In cases where the dying person had recorded their end of life wishes, relatives and friends are more likely to report that they had a good death (58%). Alongside recording end of life wishes (19%), better communication between the doctor and their loved one (39%), co-ordination of care (33%) and being able to die in a place of their choice (31%) were also identified as key aspects which could have improved the situation for the person who died in a bad way. Compassion in Dying surveyed over 2400 British adults who were asked to recall the experience of the last relative or close friend who died.