Doctors trained to protect life must agonise over any decision to let a patient die. For the relatives of the patient, accepting the doctors’ judgment must be traumatic. When they believe that their religion would treat a withdrawal of treatment as a sin, perhaps murder, the decision must be almost impossible. If, on top of this, the family’s religious convictions and the doctors’ clinical judgment clash, what then?
That is what has happened with the case of 55-year-old patient L, who cannot be named, a man from Greater Manchester. He was left in what appears to be a vegetative state after suffering severe brain damage following a heart attack in the summer. His family, who are strict Muslims, wanted treatment to continue, but clinicians at