The case of Ms. B: suicide's slippery slope?

J. Keown, The Case of Ms. B: Suicide's Slippery Slope? 28 J. MED. ETHICS 238 (2002).

In the case of Ms. B, the High Court ruled that as Ms. B was a competent adult patient, her doctors acted unlawfully in overriding her refusal of life-preserving ventilation. This commentary considers whether this case supports the proposition that in English law the right to refuse treatment extends even to refusals which are clearly suicidal. In a line of recent cases, including Ms. B's, the courts have risked undermining the law's goal of protecting life by upholding a right to refuse treatment that seems so broad as to include a right to commit suicide and to be assisted in suicide by having treatment withheld or withdrawn.

This is not to argue that the courts should always require doctors to override refusals of treatment that are suicidal. Nor is it to...