RESPONSE TO HERALD SUN STORY "SURGERY BAN ON SMOKERS"

Commenting on the story, the President of Liberty Victoria, Chris Maxwell QC, said:

"The proposition that individual hospitals and doctors may, at their own discretion, refuse surgery to smokers because of disapproval of their smoking habit is both astonishing and alarming.

Doctors have no ‘mandate’ to decide on moral grounds how health services are to be rationed.

According to the reported comments, the moral justification is said to be that to provide medical treatment to a smoker consumes scarce resources for the benefit of someone ‘who is contributing to their own demise’.

But it would represent a fundamental change in health policy if health services were to be denied to those who ‘contribute to their own demise’. A change of that kind is a matter for the legislature, after full community debate, not for individual doctors or hospitals.

In any case, there are obvious difficulties in developing any coherent policy of that kind. If ‘self-harm’ is to be the test, then logically treatment should also be refused to a person who -

• drinks too much (and how much is too much?);
• becomes overweight through lack of exercise; or
• drives too fast and, as a result, is seriously injured in a car accident.

We recognise that the position is quite different if the patient’s smoking history means that the proposed operation is too dangerous or has poor prospects of success. In those circumstances, the decision whether or not to proceed with the operation can properly be made on medical grounds, in consultation between the doctor and the patient."

8 February 2001