In applying the terms of the Human Tissue Act 2004 to a highly unusual set of circumstances, the High Court has granted permission for samples to be taken from the body of a deceased woman and tested so as to exclude the possibility that an off-duty doctor contracted HIV or other blood-borne infection in trying to save her life.
The doctor had stopped to treat the woman at the roadside after she apparently fell from a building. Although the doctor ultimately failed in attempts to save her life, her hands were covered in blood as she attempted resuscitation. The doctor had open abrasions on her hands and suffered weeks of ‘profound anxiety’ that she might have contracted HIV or hepatitis due to exposure to the dying woman’s blood.
Concerned that the legal basis for taking and testing samples from the woman’s body was not entirely clear in the circumstances, the doctor asked the Court to reassure the coroner with custody of the body and doctors who had agreed to test the samples that they would be acting lawfully.
In granting the application, the Court noted that due to her concern that she might have been infected, the doctor had commenced a course of powerful anti-retroviral drugs which had the potential to cause long-term renal, liver or pancreatic damage. She had suffered a rare but serious reaction to that medication and the Court also observed that contraction of a blood-borne disease would have had a devastating impact on her life and eminent medical career.
It had been established that the deceased was a foreign national and, whilst police officers had been unable to contact her parents, they had successfully traced a cousin who had consented to the taking and testing of samples and thanked the doctor for her efforts in trying to save her.
The Court noted that the doctor’s health had come under threat due to her ‘act of great humanity in attempting to save the woman's life’ and that, if the tests were not performed, she would have lived for the foreseeable future in a state of profoundly anxious uncertainty as to whether she had contracted a life-threatening illness.
Following the Court’s decision, samples were taken from the woman’s body and tests revealed that, happily, she had not been suffering from any blood-borne diseases.
CM v The Executor of the Estate of EJ (Deceased). Case Number: FD13P01029