Brain-damaged man’s life-sustaining treatment can be withdrawn, judge rules

A man who suffered a severe brain injury following a heart attack can have his life-sustaining treatment withdrawn, a judge has ruled.

The man, known only as XY for legal reasons, has been in hospital for more than six months with a “prolonged disorder of consciousness” from which he cannot recover.

The Whittington Health NHS Trust, which is responsible for his care, asked the Court of Protection, a specialist family court, to rule that the ventilation and clinically assisted nutrition and hydration keeping him alive should stop as they were not in his “best interests”.

XY’s family opposed the application, telling the court earlier this month that doctors underestimated his level of awareness, that he responded to touch and their voice and that he would not want treatment to be stopped.

But on Monday, Mr Justice Hayden ruled with “the deepest of sympathy to the family” that XY’s treatment could be withdrawn as further care would “generate harm, not benefit”, meaning that he is expected to die within weeks.

He said: “The responses that the family believe they see are misinterpretations. They superimpose upon XY, that which he cannot achieve or experience.

“The distortion of these relationships, at the end of XY’s life, especially in such a close and loving family, runs counter to everything that each of them believes in.

“Of course, I include XY centrally in this. It does not sit in any way comfortably with the man he has been or the integrity that he has shown throughout his life.

“I do not believe, from all I have been told, that he would wish those who he has loved to believe that he was still there with them, in any meaningful sense, when the awful truth is that he no longer is.”

Nicola Kohn, for the NHS trust, told the court that medical evidence was “unanimous” in indicating that XY “can have no meaningful interactions with the world”.

Fiona Paterson KC, representing the Official Solicitor on XY’s behalf in court, also agreed in written submissions that treatment should cease, meaning he could “be allowed a peaceful and dignified death”.

But XY’s family urged the court to allow treatment to continue, with his son arguing his father remains “here in spirit”.

Giving evidence, he said: “He is fighting. He is trying so hard and we believe through the power of love, support, and medical expertise, he may get better, but even if he does not get better, if he slowly deteriorates, we can accept that as well.

“But I cannot accept you taking him off the machine, knowing very well that will initiate the beginning of the end.”

He added that he believed his father would “100%” prefer to live in his current state if the alternative was death.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Hayden said that XY “is and has been a remarkable man” with a “thirst for life and a striking generosity of spirit”, adding that his family’s beliefs were “deeply rooted and entirely honest”.

But the judge said their views were “irreconcilable with medical evidence” and that the belief that XY “would choose his present situation to afford comfort to them is based on their false premise of what his situation actually is”.