Patients’ right to refuse food and drink
People with terminal illness have the right to refuse to eat and drink and receive palliative care if they wish to die, argues world renowned ethicist Oxford University Professor Julian Savulescu.
Professor Julian Savulescu says palliative care patients have a right to refuse food and drink.
Professor Savulescu recently spoke about the place of refusal of food and hydration as a legal and ethical form of assisted dying at the Queensland University of Technology’s School of Law's 2014 Health Law Research Centre annual public lecture last month.
“People have the right to refuse to eat and drink and the right to palliative care to relieve their symptoms,” Professor Savulescu said. “It is one way terminally ill people can control when and how they die.”
Professor Savulescu cited the 2012 case of the UK's Tony Nicklinson who died six days after the High Court rejected his bid for help to end his life by choosing to refuse food and drink as well as medical treatment.
Mr Nicklinson had been paralysed by a stroke in 2005 and had locked-in syndrome which left him unable to communicate verbally.
“Mr Nicklinson's case sparked my interest in voluntary palliated starvation. My lecture will cover how this method of assisted dying is already in use in some circumstances and will explain the ethical and legal justification for it.
“There are various drawbacks to this method, and it illustrates there is still a requirement for a legal and ethical framework for assisted suicide.”
QUT Health Law Research Centre director, Professor Ben White, said euthanasia, and proposed legislation surrounding euthanasia and assisted dying had been a longstanding staple of debate in the health law and bioethics fields, and in the broader community.
