A lesbian couple have won the right to NHS treatment to help them have a baby after threatening to sue health chiefs. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (GGC) had denied Caroline Harris and Julie McMullan IVF treatment as they were not classified as an infertile couple. The health board said it had reviewed its position in light of regulations, including the Equality Act. The women, who were suing the health board for treatment costs, said they had not yet been offered a settlement. The couple were claiming £20,000 after unsuccessful private fertility treatment, which followed them being refused NHS help. They had taken their case to the Court of Session in Edinburgh and a judicial review of the decision was due to take place at a later date. The health board at first stood by its refusal, but it has now agreed to offer the couple treatment at an assisted conception unit.
Legal guidelines aimed at clarifying the law on assisted suicide will not be prepared in Scotland. The director of public prosecutions in England and Wales has spelled out a range of factors to be taken into account when deciding on cases. However, Scotland's top law officer, Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini, said it would be inappropriate for her to publish detailed guidance. Ms Angiolini said the legal landscape in Scotland was different. In response to a letter from Liberal Democrat MSP Jeremy Purvis, Ms Angiolini said the statutory offence of assisted suicide did not exist in Scotland. However, she said involvement in a suicide might amount to homicide and that was up to Scotland's "different system" of public prosecution to determine.
The Labour party is urging the Scottish parliament to take action to standardise IVF provision across Scotland, after Labour MSP Jackie Baillie discovered wide disparities in provision between the 11 Scottish NHS boards. Ms Baillie contacted all of the boards after having been approached by a constituent who was upset about the length of IVF waiting lists where they lived.
A powerful arthritis drug, judged too expensive for patients in England and Wales, has been approved in Scotland. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice) provisionally ruled that Tocilizumab was too costly for NHS patients south of the border. However, the body's Scottish equivalent has recommended patients in Scotland be treated with the drug.
A woman who found out she had HIV when she was pregnant with twins was infected by her boyfriend who had known he had the virus for nine years. She was among four women unaware that Mark Devereaux, 41, had the virus when they had unprotected sex with him. The 28-year-old woman chose to have an abortion after discovering she had contracted the virus. Devereaux admitted four charges of culpable and reckless conduct. Sentence was deferred for reports.
Terminally ill or severely disabled patients as young as 16 will be able to seek help to end their lives in Scotland under proposals to make the country the first in the UK to legalise assisted suicide. Margo MacDonald, the independent MSP, today unveiled a Bill that she hopes will allow those whose lives have become intolerable a dignified death at home. If the Bill were to be passed Scotland would become the only place in the UK where it would be legal to help someone to end their life.
The new Scotland Parliament bill to legalize assisted suicide–which I noted in an earlier post, permits disabled or dying teenagers access to “end of life assistance”–clearly includes active mercy killing. Note that since the method of killing isn’t specified or limited, it would seem that any method agreed upon by the suicidal person and the killing actor would be legal, theoretically including being shot in the head, so long as it “allowed a person to die with dignity,” which is in the eye of the dying person, it would seem, and caused “a minimum of distress,” which a bullet to the head would provide. And it is very clear that the actual suicide assister/killer need not be the patient’s physician or, for that matter, even a health care practioner.
A man whose girlfriend found out he had infected her with HIV when she was pregnant has been jailed for 10 years. Mark Devereaux - who also had unprotected sex with other women - had known he had the virus for nine years. The 28-year-old woman, pregnant with twins, chose to have an abortion after discovering she had HIV. Devereaux, 41, from Dundee, admitted four charges of culpable and reckless conduct dating from January 2003 to December 2008.
The abortion rate has dropped for the second year running in England and Wales, statistics show. But experts said it was still too early to say whether there was a downward trend. The total number of abortions was 189,100 in 2009 - a rate of 17.5 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, according to the Department of Health figures. This compares to 18.2 in 2008 and comes after a general upward trend for the past 40 years which peaked in 2007. The abortion rate in Scotland also fell last year to 12.4 per 1,000.