Sarah Left and agencies
Friday March 22, 2002
The Guardian

A landmark high court ruling on patients' rights has granted a woman paralysed from the neck down the right to die by having her life support systems switched off.

The woman, a 43-year-old former social care worker known by court order only as Miss B, was left paralysed after a blood vessel in her neck ruptured a year ago.

She cannot breathe unaided and has been confined to the intensive care unit of a hospital. Doctors gave her less than a 1% chance of recovery.

However doctors at the hospital where Miss B is being treated said it would be against their ethics to switch off the machine needed to keep the patient alive. They argued that given more time they may be able to improve her quality of life through rehabilitation.

Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the president of the high court's family division, ruled today that Miss B was competent to make the decision to end her life peacefully and with dignity.

Today the judge found that the hospital in question, which also cannot be named, had been acting unlawfully by forcing Miss B to stay alive on the ventilator, and awarded her nominal damages of £100 for "unlawful trespass".

Miss B has been kept alive against her wishes since August, when two psychiatrists deemed her competent to make decisions about her medical care.

Dame Elizabeth said in her judgment: "One must allow for those as severely disabled as Miss B, for some of whom life in that condition may be worse than death."

Miss B has followed and taken part in proceedings via video link from her hospital bed. At the original hearing earlier this month, three screens inside the courtroom showed her lying in her bed surrounded by a team of lawyers and medical staff.

In a statement given through her solicitors after the ruling, she declared herself pleased with the outcome.

She said: "The law on consent to treatment is very clear and this has been a long and unnecessary and personally painful process.

"For this NHS trust the most positive outcome would be for them to take heed of the judgment and put in place proper governance arrangements for dealing with these issues."

Richard Stein, one of Miss B's solicitors, also welcomed the decision. "They can't force treatment on adults who are competent to make their own decisions," he said.

Miss B's solicitors said she will now take the decision on when and where to die. That may involve a move to another hospital where doctors are willing to carry out her wishes.

Dame Elizabeth took a very personal approach to the case, meeting Miss B in her intensive care bed and commenting in her judgment: "I would like to add how impressed I am with her as a person, with the great courage, strength of will and determination she has shown in the last year, with her sense of humour, and her understanding of the dilemma she has posed to the hospital."

"I hope she will forgive me for saying, diffidently, that if she did reconsider her decision, she would have a lot to offer the community at large," the judge added.