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PRESS RELEASE - 22nd May 2002

"FOOD AND FLUID ARE NOT MEDICAL TREATMENT"

ADJOURNMENT DEBATE IN WESTMINSTER HALL

It is not the business of doctors to decide that the lives of their patients are of no benefit to them, Members of Parliament agreed this morning (Wednesday 22nd May) in a ground-breaking Adjournment Debate in Westminster Hail. David Amess (Southend West) emphasised "Food and fluid are not medical treatment'. Withholding the means of life from patients unable to speak for themselves sometimes only because of sedation was a method of killing sanctioned by medical bodies but never by Parliament, and which had caused anguish to bereaved families up and down the country.

“It is time this was fully debated in the Chamber of the House” said Dr. Brian Iddon (Bolton South East). He described a case shown on Channel 4 TV on February l4th in which an elderly man was deliberately deprived of hydration after a stroke, and took ten days to die from lack of fluid.

Mr. Kevin Barron (Rother Valley), one of the lay members of the General Medical Council, reported that it had yesterday received Dr. Iddon's protest about its new draft Guidance for doctors in this area of decision-making. It had amended it in two respects. In one of these, it would no longer be demanded of a doctor with a conscientious objection to causing death by dehydration that he should himself find a replacement with no such scruples. This would now be the task of the consultant in charge of the case. 

Mr. Harold Best (Leeds North West) said it was all too easy for Governments to slip into accepting the concept of “worthless lives", as the Nazis had done within living memory.

"We know that Members of Parliament will not give up on this", commented Elspeth Chowdharay-Best, Hon. Secretary of ALERT.  "Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which lays down that everyone has the right to life, has just been strongly upheld in the European Court. M.P.s have seen through the verbal engineering that has been going on, and understand the misery caused to patients and loving relatives by the slow death from lack of fluid.  We can expect more action."

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