Annual Representative Meeting 2003
Stories from the meeting
Thursday 3 July
Call for abortion access to spread to Northern Ireland
By Lisa Pritchard, BMA News
Women in Northern Ireland should have the same access to abortion services as women in the rest of the UK, doctors agreed.
They called on the government to increase their efforts to ensure the ‘anomaly’ is rectified as soon as possible.
Gloucestershire GP Tom Yerburgh told the ARM it was unacceptable that women in Northern Ireland who wanted an abortion were forced to travel to the mainland in ever-increasing numbers because the province insisted on abiding by a 100-year-old law.
He said doctors in Northern Ireland were confused as to the best way to help their patients.
Dr Yerburgh added: ‘Let’s send out a clear message. This discrepancy is no longer acceptable. The government must take its head out of the sand and legislate.’
Antrim consultant psychiatrist Caroline Marriott said: ‘Women in Northern Ireland should have access to services in the same way as women in the rest of the UK.’
Doctors agreed overwhelmingly.
Patients must know target requirements in giving informed consent, doctors agree
Patients must be fully and properly informed of any and all factors - including the requirement to meet targets - before giving consent to treatment, doctors said.
Targets may prevent or delay patients receiving treatment on the basis of clinical need, they said.
Bedford consultant orthopaedic surgeon Richard Rawlins said the issue of trust was crucial, between doctor and manager, doctor and politician and, most importantly, between doctor and patient, adding: ‘That trust requires the highest standards of integrity, probity and honest.’
He said: ‘Information is essential and we have an obligation to obtain fully informed consent, warts and all.’
BMA medical ethics committee chairman Michael Wilks said targets and other financial pressures on the NHS were part of the information process of which patients should be aware.
(Source: BMA News)
Doctors welcome court decision on prenatal diagnosis
Doctors have welcomed the recent Court of Appeal judgement allowing parents to use prenatal diagnosis to select an embryo on the basis of genetic information to allow treatment of a seriously ill family member.
Liverpool University senior lecturer in human anatomy Peter Dangerfield said if technology could be used to benefit a living child, 'under sentence of death', it was doctors’ professional duty to do so.
He said each case must be taken on a case by case basis and he was not calling for a blanket approach.
Voicing fears about developments, Birmingham GP Gregory Gardner said the killing of undesirable and selection of desirable ones raised the spectre of eugenics.
(Source : BMA News)