A terminally ill man yesterday celebrated victory in his legal battle with the medical profession over his right to live, saying a high court verdict swung power in end-of-life decisions back to patients.
Leslie Burke, who is suffering from a degenerative brain condition, had challenged professional guidelines on sustaining life by artificial feeding and hydration, fearing that his wish to go on living until he dies naturally could be overridden.
He had argued the guidance would breach his right to life under the European convention on human rights and could result in "inhuman and degrading" treatment. The verdict was also welcomed by disability rights campaigners.
After the ruling in London yesterday, Mr Burke, 44, from Lancaster, said: "Doctors have told me I'm going to deteriorate to the stage where I need to be hospitalised and need artificial nutrition and hydration.
"That could be in 15 to 20 years' time, but my communication and speech is already deteriorating and is a problem now. Further down the line, I won't be able to communicate my wishes either way and this [feeding] could just be withdrawn without my consent.
"It's not any way to treat vulnerable people. In a civilised society, it can't be right to allow vulnerable people to effectively starve to death."
Mr Justice Munby said there was "unanswerable force" in Mr Burke's argument that the General Medical Council guidance on withholding and with drawing life-prolonging treatments emphasised the right of a competent patient to refuse treatment rather than to require it.
The bulk of the guidance was "a compelling piece of work" that should reassure patients and relatives, but its legal content was "properly vulnerable" to criticism in some respects.
It failed to acknowledge that it was the duty of a doctor who was unable or unwilling to carry out the wishes of his patient to go on providing treatment until he could find another doctor who would do so.
It also failed to acknowledge the heavy presumption in favour of life-prolonging treatment, or to spell out the legal requirement in certain circumstances to obtain prior judicial sanction for the withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration.
Mr Burke's solicitor, Paul Conrathe, said it was a groundbreaking judgment which "represents a significant shift in the balance of power away from the doctor to the patient and from the medical profession to the courts. This has to be welcomed when a doctor's decision involves life-and-death consequences."
Bert Massie, chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, said: "This judgment provides genuine protection for disabled people with serious long-term conditions. They want health professionals to do as much as possible to preserve life - as they would for non-disabled people.
"Instead, numerous cases that have come to our attention show that sometimes they opt for the easy exit without even troubling to tell family, relatives or disabled people themselves of their decisions."
The GMC, which polices doctors' standards, is considering an appeal and has been given leave to do so. It had argued the guidance was consistent with common law and the human rights convention. A senior policy adviser, Sharon Burton, said the judgment provided helpful clarification, including making it clear that doctors were not obliged to provide treatment which was futile or placed an unbearable burden on patients.
But there were some areas where further clarification was needed.
The British Medical Association said it would study the judgment closely before deciding whether it needed to amend advice to doctors. It was important the judgment provoked "a wider discussion throughout society of these highly emotive issues".
