From the Catholic Sentinel.

7 December 2006

LONDON — Policy leaning toward euthanasia is on the advance in England, fueled by some powerful officials.

First it was the nation’s leading doctors’ group telling a bioethics council that severely disabled newborns ought to be killed. Now a leading government minister says that physicians who refuse to take part in withdrawing food and treatment from incapacitated patients may face criminal charges.

Lord Charles Falconer, the Lord Chancellor of England, has warned doctors in a recent statement that they may receive prison sentences if they refuse to nix treatments, nutrition and fluids when requested.

He said physicians who don’t “allow patients to die” by denying them food and water, as was the case with Terri Schiavo in Florida, could be charged.

The warning comes as Britain’s Labour government unveiled new guidelines for doctors that will go into effect next spring.

The guidelines require doctors to respect a patient’s advanced directive or living will even it if includes a request to withdraw food and water.

“If you are satisfied that an advance decision exists which is valid and applicable, then not to abide by it could lead to a legal claim for damages or a criminal prosecution for assault,” the guidelines say.

Dr. Peter Saunders, head of the Christian Medical Fellowship, says he’s concerned about patients who will make advance decisions to have food and fluids taken away without knowing the facts.

“We are concerned that patients will make unwise and hasty advance refusals of food and fluids without being properly informed about the diagnosis,” he told Christian Today. “It is too easy for patients to be driven by fears of meddlesome treatment and ‘being kept alive,’ into making advance refusals that later might be used against them.”

The new guidelines are more concerning in light of the case of Leslie Burke.

Burke, a patient with a degenerative brain condition, fears doctors may one day refuse to provide him wanted food and water when his condition deteriorates to the point that he has to receive nourishment through a feeding tube.

Burke went to court to get a guarantee that he would not be dehydrated to death on the orders of doctors. He lost his legal battle at a European court.

He said he worries that British General Medical Council guidelines giving doctors the ultimate say over a patient’s life were an infringement on patients’ rights and his right to live.

Burke won a case at the British High Court in May 2005, but the medical council appealed the ruling and won. Burke then took the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The European court sided with the medical council, saying there was no real threat that Burke would be denied food and water when his condition deteriorates. There is no “real and imminent” threat, the court wrote.

“I only hope that if I am lucky enough to be in hospital, that the doctors treating me will not believe at some stage that it will be in my best interests for ANH [artificial nutrition and hydration] to be withdrawn, even when death is imminent, effectively letting me die of starvation and thirst when I am no longer able to communicate my wishes,” Burke said in response.

Wesley Smith, a San Francisco-based attorney who closely monitors end-of-life issues, says, “Burke’s fears are, quite rationally, based on current international legal and bioethical trends.… Indeed, current British Medical Association ethical guidelines permit doctors to stop tube-supplied nutrition and hydration if they believe the patient’s quality of life is poor, leading to eventual death.”

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