From Mrs E. Chowdharay-Best

Sir, In “Pro-life lobby and its pyrrhic victories” (Law, October 26), Charles Foster alleges that Leslie Burke’s application for a judicial review of the General Medical Council’s guidelines for dehydrating patients to death was based on a “foolish fear” that this might happen to him one day. Mr Foster is illinformed. It might not only happen to Mr Burke but to any one of us if we should suffer a stroke, if the GMC is successful in its appeal against Mr Justice Munby’s judgment.

In its grounds for appeal, the GMC seems enraged that a judge should interfere with doctors’ decisions to end the lives of patients who cannot speak for themselves. The Times has printed a number of reports of cases in which relatives complained.

Death-by-dehydration in the NHS only started with the Bland judgment in 1993, but it seems to have become a sacred tradition that must be defended at all costs.

Yours etc,

E. CHOWDHARAY-BEST, Hon Secretary, Alert, 27 Walpole Street, London SW3 4QS.

Patient’s fears well founded

Sir, It is naive and misleading for Charles Foster (Law, October 26) to claim that “common law principles make it unlawful” to withhold fluids and nutrition from patients (and therefore there is nothing fear). It is already happening, every day, and has been widely reported, including by The Times. The elderly are primarily at risk.

I am one of thousands of bereaved relatives suffering the misery of knowing that my mother died needlessly and painfully as a direct result of deliberate dehydration, and not the minor problem that she was supposed to be receiving treatment for. Like so many others, my pleas for fluids fell on deaf ears. I was oblivious to the fact that, in addition to the fluids, prescribed antibiotics were also being withheld, a known lethal combination resulting in septicaemia, renal failure and death.

As for this being “unlawful” there is little evidence of the Crown Prosecution Service taking these deaths seriously or of the police, even post-Shipman, discarding their deference to the medical profession. So much for the “common law principles” which Mr Foster would have the unsuspecting public believe will protect them.

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