Appeal judges consider whether medic should keep treating brain-damaged baby

Court of Appeal judges are set to consider whether doctors should keep providing life-support treatment to a brain-damaged baby boy.

A High Court judge last month concluded that four-month-old Midrar Ali was brain dead.

Mrs Justice Lieven, who analysed evidence at a trial in the Family Division of the High Court in Manchester, ruled that life-support treatment could lawfully end.

Midrar’s parents, Karwan Ali and Shokhan Namiq, who live in Manchester, want treatment to continue.

Mr Ali, a biomedical scientist, has described Mrs Justice Lieven’s ruling as “wrong” and mounted an appeal.

Three appeal judges, Sir Andrew McFarlane, Lord Justice Patten and Lady Justice King, are due to consider the case at a Court of Appeal hearing in London on Wednesday.

Mrs Justice Lieven heard that Midrar had been starved of oxygen due to complications at birth and had been placed on a ventilator.

Bosses at St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester asked the judge to rule that ventilation could lawfully be withdrawn so Midrar could be allowed a “kind and dignified death”.

Lawyers representing the hospital’s governing trust, the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, said three tests confirmed brain stem death.

Mrs Justice Lieven said she had “no doubt” that Midrar was brain stem dead.

She said the medical evidence was clear and consistent.