Artificial feeding guidelines challenged

A NEW alliance of doctors opposed to British Medical Association guidelines on when to stop feeding severely incapacitated patients will try today to have the advice changed.

Dr Peggy Norris, of the anti-euthanasia group Alert and a member of the new group, said the BMA advice amounted to a "death ethic''.

The Medical Alliance Opposed. to the Guidance on the Removal of Food and Fluid includes The Guild of Catholic Doctors, the Muslim Council. of Britain and has the support of the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Three non-religious groups are also involved,

Cardinal Thomas Winning, the Archbishop of Glasgow, last week launched his own campaign in the Catholic Herald to persuade the BMA to reverse its view.

The Cardinal described the guidelines as sinister and said they would cause anxity to thousands of patients and their families.

Two weeks ago the BMA published a report which advised doctors that they could artificial feeding of patients in where there was no prospect of recovery even if this hastened death.

It used the Law Lords decision in the case of the Hillsborough victim Tony Bland, that artificial feeding by tubes was a medical treatment and not nursing care.

Dr Anthony Cole, a consultant paediatrician who is leading the campaign, said it was wrong to imply that feeding by tube equated to other medical treatments such as chemotherapy.

"We hold most strongly that death by dehydration is unacceptable, inhumane and leads to a slow and painful death". Dr Cole said.

He will try to persuade the BMA annual conference in Belfast to change the advice.

Dr Michael Wilks, chair-man of the BMA ethics committee, said that if doctors were primarily focused on the welfare of the patient they did not have to "bring into their thinking any intention to cause death"