The Hindu : International / Globescan : Terminally ill win landmark ruling

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 01, 2004

International

International - Globescan

Terminally ill win landmark ruling

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Terminally ill patients in Britain have won a landmark court ruling that will bar doctors from withdrawing life-support system even when they believe that prolonging the treatment will not save a patient's life. In future, doctors will be required to continue the treatment as long as it is seen to provide "some'' benefit to the patients. The new law overturns the existing medical guidelines which give doctors powers to withdraw life-sustaining treatment if they conclude that it is "too burdensome in relation to the possible benefits'' to the patient. But a High court judge has ruled that such life and death decisions cannot be left for doctors alone to decide. "If life-prolonging treatment is providing some benefit it should be provided unless the patient's life, if thus prolonged, would, from the patient's point of view, be intolerable,'' he said. The ruling followed an appeal from a 44-year-old terminally ill former postman Leslie Burke who feared that as his condition worsened doctors might discontinue his life-prolonging treatment and allow him to die. "He does not want to die of thirst. He does not want a decision to be taken by doctors that his life is no longer worth living,'' the judge ruled.

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