Doctors film elderly patients to show they should be left to die

A SENIOR judge has condemned hospitals that film desperately ill patients to use as evidence that they should be allowed to die.

Mr Justice Hayden rebuked doctors after an NHS board used a video of an 81-year-old man to persuade the Court of Protection that his life support should be withdrawn.

In a landmark ruling, the judge told the Health Service to stop making videos of patients unless they could show ‘strong and wellreasoned justification’. And he refused to view a 20-minute video edited from several days of filming retired engineer Ronald Young in his hospital bed. Mr Young suffered brain damage after a heart attack in June last year, with doctors believing he would remain in a permanent vegetative state.

The Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board in South Wales submitted the film to gain legal permission to withdraw Mr Young’s ventilation and other life-sustaining treatment and only provide him with palliative care. Mr Young’s daughter told the High Court that her father, who lived in Port Talbot, was a devout Christian who would have wanted everything done to save him, believing ‘any life is better than no life’.

Mr Justice Hayden said in his ruling that some consultants have begun to ‘encourage’ the filming patients, warning that he was ‘ bound to record some unease with these video recordings’.

He added: ‘It is axiomatic that they are highly invasive of Ronald Young’s privacy and that he has no capacity to consent to them. They have been viewed by a variety of professionals.

‘I do not consider that video recordings should ever be regarded as a routine investigative tool.

‘Both the videoing and their distribution will require strong and well-reasoned justification.’

The judge said he had decided against watching the footage because as a ‘lay person’, he might gain a ‘distorted impression of Ronald Young’s overall situation’. He added that not being a medic, he might struggle to see what the healthcare professionals did.

Mr Young’s case was considered over a series of hearings, beginning in October last year and continuing until this February.

During this period, doctors continued to provide treatment – although the judge said Mr Young should not be revived if he suffered a second heart attack. One consultant said Mr Young was on a ‘trajectory of improvement’ and his condition was one of ‘minimal’ consciousness rather than ‘vegetative’. However Mr Young died ‘peacefully in hospital’ shortly after the judge’s ruling was drawn up in February.

The judge made a ruling in October last year that Mr Young should not be identified until three weeks after his death. His daughter was not named by the court. Legal experts applauded the ruling.

Dr David Green, director of the Civitas think-tank and a former Home Office adviser, said: ‘If medical professionals are not able to kill you without a court order, should they be able to use video evidence to get the court order?

‘The answer is surely no. A court can be given a selective recording in which the choice of what is shown is tendentious.’

He said footage could be selectively edited, adding: ‘The safeguard in the courts is that doctors can be cross-examined. Knowing that you are going to be questioned by a clever dick lawyer concentrates the mind and encourages people not to tell lies. It is the best protection we have.’

The case marks a new twist in the controversy over how hospitals should treat patients who are believed to be close to death.

It follows the scrapping in 2013 of the Liverpool Care Pathway, which hospitals were using to ease the passing of 130,000 patients by withdrawing nutrition.