Paralysed father of two given go-ahead for right-to-die case

A PATIENT with locked-in syndrome who wants a doctor to be able lawfully to end his life has won the right to have his case decided by the High Court in London.

Tony Nicklinson, from Wiltshire, who is married with two grown-up daughters, welcomed the decision by a judge yesterday.

Mr Nicklinson, 57, who suffered a stroke in 2005 while on a business trip to Athens, sums up his life as “dull, miserable, demeaning, undignified and intolerable”.

Before the stroke, he was a “very active and outgoing man”. He was left paralysed below the neck and unable to speak and now communicates by blinking or limited head movement.

In his case, to be heard fully later this year, he is asking the High Court to grant declarations that a doctor could intervene to end his “indignity”, with his consent and with him making the decision with full mental capacity, and have a “common law defence of necessity” against any murder charge.

The ruling followed an application by the Ministry of Justice calling for the case to be “struck out”, arguing that what Mr Nicklinson wanted the courts to do should be a matter for parliament. But the judge allowed most of his action to proceed, ruling he had an “arguable” case to go before a full court.

After the ruling Mr Nicklinson’s wife, Jane, a former nurse, read out a statement from her husband. It said: “I’m delighted that the issues surrounding assisted dying are to be aired in court. Politicians and others can hardly complain with the courts providing the forum for debate if the politicians continue to ignore one of the most important topics facing our society today.

“It’s no longer acceptable for 21st-century medicine to be governed by 20th-century attitudes to death.”