Experts monitor patients for days, or even months, to reach a decision – there is no easy litmus test
- Mehrunisha Suleman is director of medical ethics and law education at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford
UK courts have once again had to rule on an incredibly fraught case about the withdrawal of life support from a child: 12-year-old Archie Battersbee was found in an unconscious state by his mother on 7 April this year and never regained consciousness. The clinical team at Barts Health NHS trust viewed that it would not be in Archie’s best interests for him to continue to receive medical intervention. Archie’s parents disagreed, and sought the court’s support to have medical intervention continued. The court of appeal has ruled that it is legal for the medical team to withdraw his life support, and the supreme court has dismissed the family’s final appeal.
The tragic nature of how Archie became ill and the minutiae of the subsequent legal processes will likely be the subject of public and academic scrutiny for some time. However, what is not in dispute is that these decisions are immensely complex, and often include experts considering information that isn’t in the public domain. What does need closer inspection is how cases like Archie’s and others that have recently been brought to the courts (those of Charlie Gard, Alfie Evans and Tafida Raqeeb, to name a few) move beyond the sphere of medical decision-making and careful deliberation among healthcare teams, patients and families, to the stark arbitration of our legal system.
Mehrunisha Suleman is director of medical ethics and law education at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford
