Supreme court rules against anonymity for doctors who want to withdraw life support from children

The Supreme Court has ruled that doctors and medical professionals can now not expect life-long anonymity as a matter in fact in cases involving the withdrawal of life-support from terminally unwell children.a

In the last decade or so, cases comparable to those of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans have hit the headlines attributable to bitter legal cases between NHS staff who want to withdraw treatment from children with terminal illnesses, and oldsters who want to explore other options.

Until today doctors in such cases were granted anonymity by family courts, a practice that has effectively placed a legal ban on parents sharing their experiences and giving their side of the story.

The ruling today got here in consequence of a case brought by Rashid and Aliya Abbasi and Lanre Haastrup and supported by the Christian Legal Centre.

The Abbasis, who’re each doctors, said the treatment of their six-year-old daughter Zainab took place in a “toxic environment” through which they were pressured and lied to by clinicians. Relations between parents and doctors became so bad that Rashid Abbasi was arrested while sitting at his dying daughter’s bedside.

In the case of Mr Haastrup, his son Isaiah suffered brain damage attributable to medical negligence. The hospital admitted its fault and compensated Mr Haastrup but still went on to influence a court to permit it to terminate Isaiah’s life support against the desires of his parents.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court said that “the treatment of patients in public hospitals is a matter of legitimate public interest, and that the medical and other staff of public hospitals are public figures for the needs of the Convention, with the consequence that the boundaries of acceptable criticism are wider than within the case of personal individuals”.

Doctors wishing to stay anonymous in such cases will now have to supply “compelling evidence” that they face “an actual and continuing threat of a serious nature”.

Following the judgment, Dr Rashid Abbasi said, “As a senior doctor myself, it was a shock for me to see the behaviour of a few of my colleagues when my little daughter’s life was of their hands.”

He added, “We were brutally silenced each before and after Zainab’s death. Now, after six years of fighting in courts, we’re finally allowed to inform our story.”

Lanre Haastrup told of his own traumatic experience with the NHS, “For the past seven years, we were banned by the court order from even telling our side of the story.

“It is astonishing to what lengths the NHS has gone, taking us through every level of the judicial system several times over, first to finish Isaiah’s life after which to silence the reality about his death.”

Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Legal Centre, praised the court’s decision as a victory for transparency and said that it had been a privilege to support the Abbasi and Haastrup families of their plight.

“I shudder to think what number of other families, perhaps with similarly shocking experiences, can have been successfully silenced because they didn’t have the strength or resources to withstand,” she said.