In law, the capacity to make a specific decision has a binary quality. Somewhat like a light it is either on or off, you either have it or you don’t […]
Julian Sheather
Julian Sheather is specialist adviser (ethics and human rights), policy directorate, BMA.
Julian Sheather: Autonomy and the anorexic patient
There was extensive media comment this weekend about the Court of Protection’s decision to authorise the force-feeding of a seriously anorexic former medical student with a critically low BMI. The […]
Julian Sheather: Autonomy and the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment
The recent case of a young Jehovah’s Witness in a sickle cell crisis refusing essential blood products and being allowed to die confirms what should by now be widely known: […]
Julian Sheather: The fifth horseman of the apocalypse?
During the years when the Book of Revelations was being laid down, some time apparently in the first century AD, human populations were likely, with some exceptions, to be small, […]
Julian Sheather: Apocalypse tomorrow
There are four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine (or pestilence) and death, and climate change will unleash all of them. I was at a BMJ conference recently that […]
Julian Sheather: Making health decisions in advance – how best to avoid your worst nightmare?
On coming into force, the Mental Capacity Act (MCA), by deftly drawing together common law and permitting, via new powers of attorney, the nomination of substitute health decision makers, looked […]
Julian Sheather: Is prostitution really the answer?
I have recently been enjoying a brief flurry of reviews of Catherine Hakim’s Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital. Hakim’s book has been bounding up the notoriety charts, which […]
Julian Sheather: Living with your worst nightmare
Once in a while I make a mistake at work – in spite of my best intentions, the human will out. By and large though, people are little inconvenienced by […]
Julian Sheather: Oh for a beaker of mirth
Being a self-sacrificing soul I recently enrolled myself in a critical piece of public health research: I gave up alcohol for January. If appetite is the new front-line in health, […]
Julian Sheather: This is the way the world ends – not with a bang but a leak
I was at the Frontline Club recently, watching how the world changes. A grandiose claim perhaps, the latter, but the occasion was a debate on the journalistic impact of the […]