Muslim doctors threaten to defy new law on living wills

BY SIMON CALDWELL
THE GOVERNMENT is facing a revolt from Muslim doctors over the introduction on Monday of legally binding living wills.
The Islamic Medical Association is urging its members to defy the Mental Capacity Act that comes into force next week.
The association fears that the new law will compel Muslim doctors to become involved in killing those patients who are terminally ill or unable to communicate by withdrawing their food and fluids.
The Act could see doctors end up in prison if they followed their consciences and refused to abide by its provisions.
“British Muslims are worried today about the new Mental Capacity Act, which allows and in some cases requires food and water to be denied to mentally incapacitated, non-dying persons,” a spokesman said.
“In doing that, our innocent patients will die in pain and agony from the horrific effects of starvation and dehydration,” he said.
“We oppose strongly any court decision or power of attorney used to justify participation in starving or dehydrating anyone to death.
“All Muslim doctors, nurses and patients, expressing our Islamic beliefs, should oppose this inhumane Act.” The association said the statement was issued to express “full support and complete happiness with” a Vatican document – issued with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI earlier this month – that said doctors had a moral obligation to provide food and fluid to patients in a vegetative state.
Medical ethics groups predicted last week that the intervention by the Holy See would result in British doctors defying living wills, or “advance directives”, through which people, before they are ill, refuse treatment even if it leads to their deaths. Some doctors have already indicated that they are willing to go to jail rather than obey such instructions.
Tube feeding has been classified as “treatment” since the House of Lords ruled that doctors could end the life of the Hillsborough football disaster victim Tony Bland in 1993.
The Vatican said that artificial nutrition and hydration could not simply be terminated because doctors have determined that a person will never recover consciousness.
Exceptions may occur when patients are unable to assimilate food and water or in the rare cases when nutrition and hydration become excessively burdensome for the patient, the Vatican said, adding that the general ethical principle is that “provision of water and food, even by artificial means, always represents a natural means for preserving life and is not a therapeutic treatment”.
The statement was issued to clarify the position of the Catholic Church on the matter and was not in respect of any specific case.
But Anthony Ozimic of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said that the statement was “highly significant” because it struck at the heart of Britain’s new law. The Act allows patients to instruct doctors that they wish to refuse treatment if their condition worsens.
It will give legally binding force for the first time to “living wills” under which patients can set down their wish to refuse treatment if they become seriously or terminally ill.
There are also new provisions for patients to give “lasting powers of attorney” to a friend or relative.
This “attorney” would be able to instruct doctors to starve the patient if he or she became incapacitated.
Those refusing to obey the instructions would be open to prosecution for assault and a possible term of imprisonment. A spokesman for the British Humanist Association said that the patients’ wishes should trump the consciences of any doctors with religious convictions.
“The doctor’s first duty is to the patient and part of that has to be respecting their patients’ deeplyheld wishes in relation to their care,” he said.
“Doctors’ own religious convictions should never be allowed to interfere with patients’ rights.” The British Medical Association has also said it would not support doctors who deliberately ignore the wishes of their patients to withdraw “treatment”.