The European Court of Human Rights found a violation of the Article 8 right of an HIV-positive opthalmic nurse whose electronic health records were accessed by her colleagues (who were not involved in her medical care), after which her employment contract was not renewed.
The NHS's spending watchdog acted unlawfully when it decided to restrict access to drugs that could help thousands of older women with the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, the high court ruled today. A judge ruled that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) wrongly failed to disclose the economic reasoning behind a decision in October to restrict the supply of strontium ranelate, a drug manufactured by Servier laboratories under the brand name Protelos.
The sperm sample of a person undergoing chemotherapy treatment, stored by a hospital for his benefit for future use in case the treatment made him infertile, was property owned by him whose loss or damage entitled him to bring an action for negligence. Moreover, where the circumstances showed there was a bailment of the sperm to the hospital unit storing it, a cause of action for bailment could arise for its loss or damage sounding in damages for psychiatric injury and/or mental distress.
A sample of sperm from a person undergoing chemotherapy, which a hospital stored in case he became infertile after the treatment, was that person’s property and its loss or damage was capable of establishing a claim in negligence. Further, where the hospital’s storage was undertaken gratuitously in the sense that it was a bailee of the sperm, any breach of duty in its safe storage causing loss or damage entitled the owner to recover damages in bailment for psychiatric injury and/or mental distress.
Parents battling to keep their seriously ill baby alive have failed to overturn a ruling allowing him to die. The nine-month-old boy has a rare metabolic disorder and has suffered brain damage and respiratory failure. The couple had appealed against a judge's ruling on Thursday that it was in the boy's best interests to withdraw his "life sustaining treatment". The High Court ruling gives doctors at an unnamed NHS trust powers to turn off the ventilator keeping "baby OT" alive.
Twenty-five years ago it was common practice to bring about the deaths of some children with learning disabilities or physical impairments. This paper considers a small number of landmark cases in the early 1980s that confronted this practice. These cases illustrate a process by which external forces (social, philosophical, political, and professional) moved through the legal system to effect a profound change outside that system – primarily in the (then) largely closed domain of medical conduct/practice. These cases are considered from a socio-legal perspective. In particular, the paper analyses the reasons why they surfaced at that time, the social and political contexts that shaped the judgments, and their legacy.
Debbie Purdy, who wants her husband to accompany her to Switzerland for an assisted suicide without fear of prosecution, took her case to the United Kingdom’s highest court, the House of Lords, for a final appeal this week. Ms Purdy, who has progressive multiple sclerosis, scored an important victory on the first day of the two day hearing, when the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, conceded that article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private life, applies to cases like hers.
A couple have spoken of their shock after an IVF clinic mix-up led to their last embryo being wrongly implanted into another patient. They were further angered when it emerged the other woman was given the morning-after pill. The couple from Bridgend won their case for damages after the mistake at Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales. Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust apologised "unreservedly" for the error and said it had improved checking procedures. The trust admitted gross failures in care and has also agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement to the couple.