Hillsborough part 2: advance decisions and futile treatment

In the second article on the impact of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster on healthcare law, Richard Griffith discusses the case of Tony Bland, who suffered prolonged hypoxia due to the crushing crowd surge, leaving him in a persistent vegetative state. Some 3 years after the incident, the judicial committee of the House of Lords was asked to rule on whether it would be lawful to withdraw his artificial nutrition and hydration, resulting in death. The opinions of the law lords in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993] continue to inform health law 25 years after the disaster, shaping and developing the use of advance decisions to refuse treatment and setting out when it would be lawful to withdraw futile life-sustaining treatment.