Once again, Britain is being denounced both at home and overseas as being in thrall to a “culture of death”, after “RS”, a middle-aged man of Polish nationality, died this week as a consequence of nutrition and hydration being withdrawn from him, at the end of a prolonged legal battle, by doctors at the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.
Following on from the case of Alfie Evans in 2018, this latest death has further highlighted the way in which British clinicians and judges now operate under a mindset in which the preservation of life has become a secondary, even a deprecated, consideration compared with quality of life. In both cases, foreign governments went to heroic lengths to facilitate the transportation of the patient out of Britain, under scrupulous clinical conditions, to receive specialist care overseas, only to be frustrated.
