Court threat over ‘illegal’ coronavirus-related ‘Do Not Revive’ orders on disabled people
Ventilator: if you’re disabled, and you catch Covid-19, a doctor might deny you access to one of these and let you die. If he does so without asking you, he’s abusing your human rights. Matt Hancock is being told to step in and stop this – or be slapped down by the courts.
Remember when This Site reported that doctors were being ordered to deny coronavirus care to people with disabilities?
It went on for a while.
Eventually it seemed the people at the top of the NHS put a stop to the practice, telling hospitals, GPs and NHS managers not to issue such letters.
So why are we being told that medical professionals are still being told not to revive people with disabilities who are suffering from Covid-19?
The issue is that doctors are being told to issue these letters about disabled people, without consulting those people on whether they agree with the decision. That’s an abuse of human rights.
And now it seems Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care may face a court order to halt the practice.
The problem is that the government is not directly responsible for the issuing of these letters – doctors are.
But law firm Leigh Day, acting for Kate Masters, whose family has already fought a successful legal action against a DNR order, says the government is failing to provide proper guidance on this issue.
So Hancock is facing an ultimatum. Either he honours the following series of requests:
Masters wants the government to use its emergency coronavirus laws to put several safeguards in place. These state that doctors must not issue DNR notices unless the patient and/or their family/carers are:
- Told “that it is not appropriate to consider CPR and why”.
- Provided with “an opportunity to discuss their views and wishes regarding receiving CPR with the healthcare professional making the decision”.
- Given “clear information as to how the healthcare professional will take into account their views/wishes, the relevance of clinical judgement regarding efficacy of CPR (including being clear consent is not required) and how resource constraints are taken into account”.
- “Informed of the DNR decision and the reasons why (which must be individual to the patient)”.
- Advised “they can request a second opinion if they disagree with the decision”.
Or, if he fails to respond by May 7 (tomorrow, at the time of writing), then he’ll be dragged into court to face a judicial review that could force him to treat people with disabilities with the same respect as people with money.
I think he’ll take the court option, even though the request is perfectly reasonable.
Tories want to kill people with disabilities.
They’re a little… Nazi in that respect.
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Yes,it should not be forgotten that the organised killing in Nazi Germany began with the disabled,before moving on to the main targets.
JT it was called aktion T4. But. How many believe it it’s happening daily
We just gone through two deaths in our family
Were my mother and mother in-law were never
Given resuse or any other help just left to die albeit
Oxygen and morphine to help them with pain but no other help left to die one 90 and the other 86
Expect myself if have to go in il have that butterfly above my bed and that dnr so they say hospitals are empty do they think we rush to go in I think not