By Aisling McMahon Recent moves such as by the United States and United Kingdom to negotiate deals to access large quantities of vaccines/medicines for Covid-19 within their territories raise serious questions around access to healthcare and global equitable distribution. Such attempts to secure preferential access, although understandable within the national context, can jeopardise supplies of […]
Category: Law
Can Welfare Powers of Attorney in Scotland refuse medical treatment on the granter’s behalf?
By Amanda Ward There is ambiguity to what extent Welfare Powers of Attorney (WPA) in Scotland can refuse or withhold consent to medical treatment. The primary legislation to be consulted is the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 (AWIA). A welfare power of attorney relates to decision making in relation to the granter’s personal and […]
COVID-19 and health workers’ rights in Africa: the duty to treat or not to treat?
By Adaeze Aniodoh “The public’s and the health workers’ concerns are not mutually exclusive; the goal is safety and fairness for all. Patients have a right to be protected. Health workers also have rights, and when infected they become patients.” Recently the world has come to shock as the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 ‘a […]
Law and ethics in the time of COVID-19
By Neil Pickering In order to support its Alert Level 4 declaration, the New Zealand government has taken up extraordinary legal powers to control people’s lives. As Professor Andrew Geddis of the Otago University Faculty of Law is reported to have said: “These give the state extraordinary reach into our lives, and transfer extraordinary power […]
Supreme Court rules on the first prosecution of a Dutch doctor since the euthanasia act
Eva C.A. Asscher and Suzanne van de Vathorst. On April 21st the Supreme Court passed judgement on the case of the first doctor to be prosecuted since the 2002 Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide (Review Procedures) Act. In September 2019 a Dutch nursing home doctor performing euthanasia on a patient with severe […]
DNACPRs and advance care planning in the COVID19 pandemic: key lessons
By Catriona McMillan and Victoria Sobolewska Patient-doctor discussions surrounding do not attempt cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) orders amidst the COVID-19 pandemic have caused widespread, understandable panic in the UK, set against a backdrop of proportionately higher elderly deaths, discussions surrounding resource allocation (particularly with reference to ventilators), and emerging stories of rising care home deaths. Here, […]
Having a possible escape to end life at your own timing offers reassurance and changes the perspective on current and prospective suffering
By Martijn Hagens. In a recent blog, Ben Colburn discusses that ‘the option of assisted dying is good for you even if you don’t want to die. In the paper related to that blog, he argues that “if someone knows they have a (potentially) acceptable escape, it changes the character of the choice set as a […]
Euthanasia please, we are Portuguese
By Vera Lúcia Raposo Recently, in spite of protests from conservatives and the Catholic Church, the Portuguese parliament approved five proposals aimed to allow medically assisted death (referred to as ‘anticipation of death’) at the patient’s request. The procedure requires specific conditions: patients of legal age, with incurable and fatal disease or permanent injury, and […]
Should the state permit us to be younger and treat us accordingly in health care?
By Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Thomas Søbirk Petersen. In some states, citizens can change their officially recognized gender. Why not other identities as well? Why not age, for instance? In December 2018, 69-year-old Dutchman and former politician Emile Ratelband lost his court battle to have his legal age reduced by 20 years. In presenting his case […]
The challenge of HIV decriminalisation
By Matthew Weait This post is part of a series on ethical and legal perspectives in sexual and reproductive health first posted on the BMJ Sexual and Reproductive Health blog. Ever since the discovery of HIV and its modes of transmission there has been a debate about the circumstances in which it is legitimate to criminalise those who […]