Professor Penney Lewis on the legal and ethical complexities of the Ashya King case

Professor Penney Lewis, Co-Director of the Centre of Medical Law & Ethics, The Dickson Poon School of Law, has made multiple appearances in the media recently commenting on the legal and ethical complexities of the case of Ashya King. The story of the five-year-old removed from Southampton General Hospital by his parents - where he was receiving treatment for a brain tumour - has been widely reported in the media.

Professor Lewis has written a blog piece on ‘The importance of language in the Ashya King case’. She writes:

 “At the time Ashya King’s parents removed him from hospital in Southampton, they had ‘parental responsibility’ for him and were responsible for making decisions about his care, including where it would take place. Many journalists and lawyers (including myself) have made this clear in the last few days, rebutting the suggestion that doctors’ consent was required for Ashya’s removal. Yet the hospital’s most recent statement still refers to his parents’ failure to obtain ‘the consent of medical staff’ for his removal, and media reports today quote an oncologist at the hospital as stating that before proton beam radiotherapy could commence, ‘Ashya is first required to undergo two cycles of chemotherapy”.

Read the opinion piece in full on the Centre of Medical Law & Ethics blog.

Professor Lewis has also been interviewed for multiple news outlets including: BBC Radio 4 Today; Channel 4 News; Sky News; BBC World; and BBC Radio Five Live. Her interviews with the Press Association and the Associated Press were widely quoted in the national and international press including the Observer, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, ITV News, the Huffington Post, and the National Post.

Visit Professor Lewis’s web profile.

Visit the Centre of Medical Law & Ethics web pages.