The Foxhunter: To Die With Dignity

This tragic story happened in a Dublin Hospital in the early 1970's. Through gross medical incompetence, negligence, poor practice, and judgement, compounded by denial and arrogance, a young woman is put into a chronic vegetative state from which there is no prospect of ever recovering. She is undergoing a surgical procedure that she did not need when she suffers a cardiac arrest with devastating consequences.

Those responsible for this disaster added to their disgrace by denying their victim her right to die. Rather, by tube feeding her, they locked her into a hideous state of suspense between life and death from which there is no escape unless the doctors say so.

Finally, after almost twenty years, the victim’s mother was forced to take a High Court action compelling her daughter’s carers to allow her daughter to die with a modicum of dignity. After a long, protracted, and tortious legal battle, she eventually won her case. The artificial feeding was discontinued, and her daughter was allowed to rest in peace at last.

Because these legal proceedings were held in camera the names of the institutions and individuals involved were never disclosed or released into the public domain. Therefore, what’s given here is, of necessity, fictionalized. However, the author, a retired doctor and coroner, was made sufficiently aware of the facts of the case by colleagues involved at the time.