THIS WEEK Leslie Burke sat in court in a wheelchair and listened while lawyers argued whether he should be starved and dehydrated to death. The lawyers arguing in favour of the proposition were egged on by the Secretary of State for Health, who deemed it too expensive to feed and water the ailing patient.The General Medical Council was contending before the court that decisions over treatment were for doctors, not patients, ignoring utterly the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act which allow patients to make living wills denying themselves treatment and which will bind any doctor who might take...
