“Why was the decision taken to suspend the treatment for Charlotte Wyatt? If the decision was due to the intention to put an end to a life to which, mistakenly, no value is given, then it is tantamount to euthanasia by omission. Each life has value and no life ought to be deliberately terminated because considered without value”. So declared Helen Watt, directress of the Catholic Linacre Centre for Medical Ethics, in a statement released to SirEurope on the case of Charlotte Wyatt, the baby girl who will be left to die in the arms of her parents after a judge of the Appeals Court had ruled that to subject her to further medical treatment would serve no therapeutic purpose. “The doctors added Watt might not have had any intention to accelerate her death, although they must have predicted that any omission of treatment would have this effect. They might have wanted to stop the treatment simply because it would not bring to the patient a benefit sufficient to justify its contra-indications”. In fact, explains Watt, “the contra-indications, that a form of treatment involves, comprise the suffering and distress caused in the patient and also the use of medical resources to which other patients would have a greater right. Patients ever more frequently have to face the double threat of deliberate homicide and unjustified abandonment. Nonetheless, to prevent patients having their treatment suspended for the wrong reasons, it is important not to give the impression that we are in favour of therapeutic obstinacy”, disproportionate to any expected result.
