ABC v Thomson Medical Pte Ltd and others, Singapore Civil Court of Appeal [2017] SGCA 20 - read judgment It is a trite reflection that law should change with the times but every so often we see the hair-pin bends in law's pursuit of modern technology. This case from Singapore about reproductive rights and negligence…
In this case, a mistake was made in the process of an in vitro-fertilisation procedure involving a Singaporean Chinese woman and her German Caucasian husband.
Mistakenly, the wife’s egg was inseminated with sperm from an unknown Indian donor.
Baby P was born healthy, but with a different skin tone.
The claimant’s affidavit states that the pain and suffering that she suffered as a result, physically, mentally and emotionally, was “beyond words” and was “agonizing”
The House of Lords in Purdy forced the DPP to issue offence-specific guidance on assisted suicide, but Jacqueline A Laing argues that the resulting interim policy adopted last September is unconstitutional, discriminatory and illegal. In July 2009, the law lords in R (on the application of Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2009] All ER (D) 335 required that the DPP publish guidelines for those contemplating assisting another to commit suicide. The DPP produced a consultation paper (23 September 2009) seeking to achieve a public consensus, albeit outside Parliament, on the factors to be taken into account in determining when not to prosecute assisted suicide. Although the consultation exercise is hailed by proponents of legislative change as a democratic, consensus-building and autonomy-enhancing initiative, there is much to suggest that, on the contrary, the guidance is unconstitutional, arbitrary and at odds with human rights law, properly understood.
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.
BERLIN — In a landmark ruling that will make it easier for people to allow relatives and other loved ones to die, Germany’s highest court ruled Friday that it was not a criminal offense to cut off life-sustaining treatment for a patient. The court overturned the conviction of a lawyer who last year was found guilty of attempted manslaughter for advising a client to sever the intravenous feeding tube that was keeping her mother alive, although in a persistent vegetative state. The mother had told her daughter that she did not wish to be kept alive artificially.
BERLIN — Embryos created during in vitro fertilization can be screened for genetic defects before being implanted in the womb, a German high court said in a landmark ruling Tuesday. The Federal Supreme Court in Leipzig ruled in support of a Berlin gynecologist who had carried out screening on embryos for three different couples and implanted only those that were healthy. The embryos with hereditary genetic defects were left to die off. The high court's ruling upheld a decision by a Berlin state court that the doctor's action did not violate German laws for the protection of embryos. The 47-year-old doctor, who was not identified by the court, brought the case to court himself in 2006 to clarify the legal situation. He was first acquitted by a regional court in Berlin, but the city's state prosecutor appealed.
A decision last week by Germany’s Federal Supreme Court to acquit a gynaecologist of illegal abortion after he chose to carry out genetic diagnosis on several human embryos and discarded those with genetic defects has stirred a debate about the possible need for a new law tightening the rules on preimplantation genetic diagnosis. The landmark ruling said that embryos created from in vitro fertilisation (IVF) can be screened for genetic defects before being implanted in the womb. The 47 year old doctor, who was not identified, brought the case to court himself in 2006 to clarify the legal situation. He had already been acquitted in May 2009 by a regional court in Berlin, but the prosecutor had appealed the decision.
Germany’s highest criminal appeals court has overturned the conviction for attempted manslaughter of a lawyer who advised a woman to cut the intravenous feeding tube keeping her comatose mother alive. In a landmark ruling hailed as a victory by advocates of the right to die, the Federal Court of Justice ruled on 25 June that terminally ill, comatose patients who had previously signalled their opposition to life prolonging treatments have the right to have such treatments stopped. The ruling gives legal cover for what some call "passive" euthanasia of terminally ill patients but is not applicable to the administration of a lethal substance, which remains illegal.
Two children in Northern Ireland whose white mother was mistakenly impregnated with sperm from South Africa labelled “Caucasian (Cape Coloured)” during in vitro fertilisation have failed in a compensation claim at the High Court in Belfast. The children’s mother, who brought the case on their behalf, claimed that their quality of life was adversely affected because they looked markedly different from their parents and had quite different skin colour from each other. She said that they were subject to “abusive and derogatory comment and hurtful name calling from other children, causing emotional upset.” But Mr Justice Gillen ruled that they had not suffered any loss or damage for which the law could compensate them.
Although the number of patients seeking treatment elsewhere in the European Union is small,3 this could easily change, especially if people are faced with growing waiting lists or other forms of rationing as the new groups seek to control their budgets. British residents have had the right to obtain treatment in another EU country since 1971.4 Initially, the opportunities were limited mainly to people who fell ill when abroad or, less often, when the NHS agreed that there were good reasons for patients being treated abroad (for example, a citizen of another country resident here returning home to give birth