Medical Ethicist Says ‘Sanctity of Life Law Has Gone Too Far’ — Law Should Allow Some Patients to be Dehydrated to Death

A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal has pro-lifers up in arms over an ethicist’s suggestion that keeping some patients alive would lead to depleting ”severely resource limited healthcare services.” The ethicist authoring this piece states that it would apply to life-support for patients who may have previously expressed not wanting the life-extending services.

Raanan Gillon, emeritus professor of medical ethics and former chairman of the Institute of Medical Ethics, writes in the British Medical Journal that a 2011 court decision in Britain regarding a brain dead woman whose family wanted to take her off life-prolonging resources but were denied is a ruling that “distorts healthcare provision, healthcare values, and common sense.”
(Related: Ethicists Argue in Favor of ‘After-Birth Abortions‘ as Newborns ’Are Not Persons’)
More specifically, the case decided in September 2011 ruled that the woman who had been kept alive through a feeding tube for more than eight years would not be given the “right to die.” The Guardian reported at the time that the family of the woman, legally referred to as “M,” had requested she be taken off the supply of nutrients and water being given to her, but the high court decided despite the “number of negative aspects” in M’s life, she also had some “positive elements.”
(Related: Should Man With Paralyzing Stroke But Intact Mind Be Give the ‘Right to Die’?)
Judge Justice Baker said in the precedent-setting ruling that he “[accepted] the evidence of the carers,“ but her life is ”not without pleasures, albeit small ones.” Acknowledging the support of the family and supposing their distress at his final decision, Baker still ruled that M’s current life state would not justify withdrawal of life support.

READ MORE