Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

The courts, the bishops and the troubling case of a dying man

(Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s not every day a Polish bishop asks an English bishop to write to Matt Hancock to plead for the life of a Polish citizen living in England, but that’s what’s happened this week. Last year, Mr RS, as he’s known, had a heart attack, went to hospital in Plymouth and was given hydration and nutrition through tubes into his body. The hospital withdrew this support after a court ruling earlier this month. RS’s wife and children, living here, wanted the hydration and feeding stopped; his Polish mother and sisters wanted it maintained.

The Court of Appeal has sided with his wife and children, while the European Court of Human Rights has refused applications by his Polish family to intervene. 

Do we classify food and water as medical treatment because it’s delivered through a tube? Or as basic care?

Right now, the man is dying of thirst — there is no other way of putting it. The withdrawal of artificial hydration has been allowed by English courts ever since the grim case of Tony Bland, a boy left in a vegetative state after the Hillsborough disaster who died after a court ruled he should have the tubes removed that allowed him to be given sustenance.

But what’s new in this case is the intervention of the Polish bishops. The case has caused some disquiet in Poland and the president of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, wrote to Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols asking for his intervention. And so Bishop John Sherrington and Bishop Mark O’Toole wrote to the Health Secretary on behalf of Cardinal Nichols to suggest that giving a patient hydration and nutrition wasn’t medical treatment but basic care. Their letter expressed their opposition: ‘to this definition of medical treatment, and to convey the offer of the Polish authorities to assist in the transfer of Mr RS to Poland for his future care’.

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