A terminally ill woman launched an action in the High Court in London this week for the right to be sedated into unconsciousness by morphine, even though it will hasten her death.
Kelly Taylor, 30, from Bristol, has Eisenmenger's syndrome, an irreparable heart defect that causes chest pain and other symptoms, and Klippel-Feil syndrome, a congenital defect marked by fusion of the vertebrae in the neck. Her doctors have not been able to find a combination of drugs to relieve her pain, and she has been told that she has less than a year to live.
Her cardiologist and palliative care consultant are refusing to carry out her wishes, saying that to increase her dosage of morphine to such a high level would amount to euthanasia, which is murder under English law.
The case has also been brought against her GP, but the court was told at a preliminary hearing this week that he disputed her claim that she had consulted him and that he had refused to give the treatment.
Mrs Taylor is asking the court to declare that the treatment would be lawful under the longstanding common law principle of double effect, which allows a doctor to administer treatment that hastens death, providing the intention is to relieve pain rather than to kill.
She also maintains that denying her the treatment is a breach of the ban on “inhumane or degrading treatment” in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Her solicitor, Richard Stein, said: “It is a straightforward case where, to alleviate the pain of her condition, it may be necessary to use an amount of morphine which could bring about a coma, and she would be unable to take food or drink and this would ultimately cause death.”
A BMA spokesman said: “While we sympathise with Mrs Taylor's situation, we cannot support her request for doctors to sedate her to a state of unconsciousness with the specific intention of ending her life. In our view this would involve the doctors in assisting her suicide, which is both unlawful and unethical.”
The case has similarities with an action brought in 1996 by Annie Lindsell, who had motor neurone disease and wanted a declaration that her GP could administer potentially fatal doses of morphine to spare her the mental distress of symptoms in the late stages of the disease, including difficulty in swallowing.
The case never went to a judgment because she withdrew her application after lawyers for all the parties in the case, including a Queen's counsel for the attorney general, agreed that the treatment she wanted was acceptable medical practice. She died before the drugs could be administered.
Mrs Taylor, who has been married for 10 years, was on a waiting list for a heart and lung transplantation for nine years, but she came off the list three years ago when she became too weak to undergo the operation. Last July she attempted to starve herself to death but gave up after 19 days because of the pain.
A spokesman for St Peter's Hospice in Bristol, one of the defendants in the case, said: “St Peter's Hospice is working together with Kelly to support her in the way that she wishes, and we hope that this case will clarify an important point of law which could affect hundreds of hospices across the country.
“The doctors, management, and trustees of St Peter's believe that Kelly's request to the court would mean staff acting illegally, and the hospice looks forward to a well informed judgment being made in respect of this case.”
Mr Justice Kirkwood directed that a full hearing of the case should take place in the week beginning 26 March.