medical treatment

• Reasonable surgical interference is another area where consent is a reasonable defence.
• Reasonable surgical interference refers to where surgery is needed to save the patient's life or to improve their health in some way. consent to the operation is a defence to any charge of an offence against the person.
• Mentally capable adults can cosnent to reasonable medical treatments, they are also allowed to refuse consent. if they refuse consent, then if surgery or another treatment were performed, it would become a criminal offence. For example, in the case of r v Blaue, the patient refused a blood transfusion under the guise of religion; treatment would not have been allowed for that reason.
• If a patient is unconscious so that their consent cannot be asked, medical staff will be asked to obtain consent from relatives. where it is not possible to gain consent from relatives, where treatment is necessary and must be performed quickly, an operation can be performed without actual consent.
• The cases of r v melin and r v BM show that what actually amounts to reasonable medical procedures can lead to difficulties with respect to cosmetic procedures and body adornments.
• r v BM 2018:

  • The defendant, BM, was a registered tattooist and body piercer who also provided body modifications. He had no formal medical qualifications. He was convicted of three counts of causing actual bodily harm based on the following procedures, which had been done without anaesthetic:

  1. Removal of a customer's ear
  2. removal of a customer's nipple
  3. splitting of a customer's tongue to make it resemble a reptile's tongue

  All customers consented to the serious and irreversible injuries