Doctors allowed a young woman to die because she requested no medical help if she attempted suicide and feared they would be charged with assault if they treated her.
Doctors at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital allowed a young woman, Kerrie Wooltorton, 26, to die because she had signed a so-called ‘living will’ that they feared would mean they could be prosecuted if they intervened to save her life. It is believed to be the first time a ‘living will’ has been used to legally aid someone’s suicide.
Ms Wooltorton, who lived alone in a flat in Norwich and suffered depression over an inability to have children, was rushed to hospital by ambulance after swallowing car anti-freeze fluid. She arrived fully conscious in the accident and emergency unit clutching a letter in which she said she did not want to be saved and was ‘100 per cent aware of the consequences’. Before lapsing into unconsciousness she gave the letter to hospital’s doctors.
A consultant sought legal advice before deciding not to intervene and Ms Wooltorton died the following day.
Dr Alexander Heaton, the hospital’s consultant renal physician, said he had ‘no alternative’ but to acquiesce to the Ms Wooltorton’s request.
‘I would’ve been breaking the law and I wasn't worried about her suing me, but I think she would have asked, ‘What do I have to do to tell you what my wishes are?’’ he said. ‘It's a horrible thing to have to do but I felt I had no alternative but to go with her wishes. Nobody wants to let a young lady die.’
Ms Wooltorton’s family have criticised the doctors, saying they should have intervened to save her.
(See the Daily Mail report)
An inquest into Ms Wooltorton’s death was told she had a rare gynaecological condition, uterus didelphys, which meant she had difficulty conceiving and subsequently became depressed. She had been treated at mental health units and drunk lethal anti-freeze up to nine times in the preceding 12 months. Each time she was given dialysis to flush the toxic solution from her body.
Ms Wooltorton drafted her wishes on 15 September 2007. Details of the case emerged at an inquest which opened two years ago and concluded on Monday, 28 September 2009.
According to the draft guidance drawn up by the General Medical Council (GMC), under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which came info force in April 2007, doctors who ignore 'living wills' can be charged with assault and face being struck off from practising. However, under the Act a person must be assumed to be mentally capable of making a decision about their treatment 'unless it is established that he lacks capacity'.
(See the Daily Telegraph report)
The Mental Capacity Act 2005 was passed by the Labour Government despite a rebellion by backbench MPs. Ministers sold the Act as a way for patients to have more choice over their treatment. But dissident MPs said that giving legal force to living wills was a major step on the road to legalised euthanasia.
Jim Dobbin, Labour MP for Heywood and Middleton, said on Thursday this week: 'This is exactly what we said would happen when this legislation was debated. It is up to the medical profession to join MPs in calling for this law to be revised.'
George Pitcher, Religion Editor of The Daily Telegraph wrote in the Telegraph blog:
‘What this miserable story also tells us is just how far the medical profession and the emergency services have been pushed into a culture where it’s now okay to let people commit suicide if they apparently want to.
‘The DPP’s new ‘guidelines’ last week on when assisted suicides won’t be prosecuted have little to do directly with this case, but they are part of the new climate of creeping ‘suicide rights’ and stealth-euthanasia. As even the hopeless pro-euthanasia lobbyists Dignity in Dying said yesterday: ‘In emergency situations it is often very difficult to assess the validity of an advance decision.’
‘I’ll say. In fact, most suicides that are saved by paramedics turn out profoundly to regret their attempted suicide (and, remember, Miss Wooltorton called an ambulance, albeit because she claimed that she didn’t want to die alone and in pain – very much the vocabulary of the pro-suicide movement).
‘That’s before we confront Miss Wooltorton’s apparent depression, the fact that living-wills legislation was intended for the terminally ill, not suicides, to guide doctors on withholding treatment and her father is left devastated by his loss and the hospital’s lack of life-saving intervention for his daughter.
‘It’s a truly disgusting state of affairs. And it’s where euthanasia’s enthusiasts – from Dignity in Dying to the manipulative Lord Falconer and the malleable DPP – have brought us. I wonder how pleased they were with themselves to read the Wooltorton’s story this morning.’
Dr Peter Saunders, Director of Care Not Killing, an alliance of over 40 organisations who are opposed to the legalisation of euthanasia or physician assisted suicide in the United Kingdom, said:
‘A mentally competent patient has the right to refuse treatment but you have to ask whether someone who attempts suicide nine times in a year is really of sound mind.
‘Just imagine if the reaction to everyone being wheeled into A&E after attempting suicide was ‘Oh, they obviously want to die. Let them go’.’
Dominica Roberts, Chairman of Pro-Life Alliance, said:
‘We think that it is very tragic indeed and we made a warning before the legislation went through that this exact thing would happen. At the time, doctors warned against it because a lot of people who attempt to commit suicide are thankful they have been revived the next day.
‘Everybody knows someone who has at one point been full of despair, but they have turned their lives around and lived through difficult times. We think the law should be changed because any safeguards which were made are useless. We just cannot form safeguards strong enough to protect against this kind of case,’ she added.
So-called living wills, also known as advance directives or advanced decisions, are instructions given by individuals specifying what actions should be taken for their health in the event that they are no longer able to make decisions due to illness or incapacity.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, Director of CCFON and The Christian Legal Centre said:
‘The case of the ‘living will’ suicide of 26-year old Kerrie Wooltorton of Norwich is utterly tragic. It is tragic that a young woman should feel so depressed and see no hope for her life – a tragedy which should give each and every one of us pause for thought because it would seem that our society leads far too many people to feel this way. It is tragic for those around her who loved her. And it is tragic in what it reflects of what we have lost as a society.
‘My profound hope in the midst of the loss of a precious young woman, Kerrie Wooltorton’s life is that we as a society, as well as lamenting her loss, reflect deeply on why she and so many others feel the way she did and on the change of the spirit of lawmaking in the country that placed the doctors involved in such a terrible position. I believe that what we are starting to see in our country is a form of chaos that has come out of letting go of age-old values and replacing them with values based on the modern doctrine of human rights.
‘No-one should claim that society was perfect in times past. And no-one should claim that the architects of human rights based law are without care. But however compelling a case may be, where society sends a message through its laws and the interpretation of its laws, that human life is not sacred and always worthy of the protection of the law, the outworking will be a lowering of perception of our intrinsic value with all that entrains, and chaos in the professional framework for doctors, lawyers and others whose ancient value systems served society by providing a degree of moral clarity that so rapidly is being supplanted by the new ethos.
‘I hope we will reflect on the range of measures taken recently and currently being developed which erode the protection of life in law. Unless we do, I fear we will see further erosion in our perception of life’s value, a growing number of suicides amongst young and old and a growing sense of something lost – at both the individual and social level.
‘Over the past 10 or so years much has changed in our laws and practice to shift our thinking. In a further 10 years, unless we stop and change, our society and our perception of our own individual lives could reach a point that would be truly unrecognisable to one visiting our time from the days before the social outworking of the doctrine of human rights.’
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