Doctors will be allowed forcibly to sedate the 55-year-old woman in her home and take her to hospital for surgery. She could be forced to remain on a ward afterwards. The case has sparked an intense ethical and legal debate. Experts questioned whether lawyers and doctors should be able to override the wishes of patients and whether force was ever justified in providing medical care.
A cancer patient who has a phobia of hospitals should be forced to undergo a life-saving operation if necessary, a High Court judge has ruled. Sir Nicholas Wall, sitting at the Court of Protection, ruled doctors could forcibly sedate the 55-year-old woman - referred to as PS. PS lacked the capacity to make decisions about her health, he said. Doctors at her NHS Foundation trust had argued PS would die if her ovaries and fallopian tubes were not removed. Evidence presented to Sir Nicholas, head of the High Court Family Division, said PS was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year.
Doctors have been given permission to perform potentially life-saving cancer surgery on a woman who has a "delusional belief" she does not have the disease. A judge at the Court of Protection in London ruled that the treatment would be lawful and in the best interests of the 61-year-old, who suffers from chronic schizophrenia.
Doctors believe that a terminally-ill teenager who has a brain tumour will die within weeks after a judge gave them permission to withhold treatment. The 18-year-old man’s parents wanted chemotherapy to continue and his mother had launched a “passionate” fight “for his life” at a fraught late-night hearing at the Court of Protection in London. She said her son was “absolutely adored” and a “miracle child” and urged judge Mrs Justice Hogg not to rule that he “has to die”. The judge described the case as “tragic” but she decided that specialists could lawfully stop providing chemotherapy, end “neuro-surgical intervention” and not resuscitate, after analysing evidence at a hearing which lasted more than eight hours.