Wrongful Birth Revisited: Khan v Meadows [2021] UKSC 21 – a reminder

To get us all up to speed ahead of this Supreme Court judgment, which is due to be handed down on Friday 28 May, Helen Waller has helpfully set out the background to this case, the decisions of the lower courts, and a summary of the law on wrongful birth claims. We will update this blog post in the next few days with the result of the Supreme Court decision and our analysis of it.

Brennan and others v (1) City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (2) Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust [2021]: healthcare litigation and human rights

In this post, Megan Griffiths looks at the recent case of Brennan and others v (1) City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (2) Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust [2021]1 WLUK 429, a very sad case concerning the decomposition of a woman's body in a hospital mortuary.

COVID 19 Vaccine – questions of safety and civil liability

The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”) has given Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 temporary authorisation under regulation 174 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012, which enables temporary authorisation to be granted in response to situations such as pandemics. In this blog, which is the first of a two-part series, Cressida Mawdesley-Thomas considers when there could be civil liability for an unlicensed vaccine. It also considers the conditions imposed by the MHRA for the granting of the temporary authorisation to Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Informed consent in children and young people

In this blog post, Megan Griffiths summarises and analyses the High Court’s recent decision in Bell v Tavistock NHS Trust. This judicial review decision looks at informed consent practices for children and young people with gender dysphoria, whether they can achieve Gillick competence for consenting to puberty blocking treatment, and what such consent processes would require in practice. This decision is likely to impact on guidance specific to gender dysphoria, but the findings on the types of information required for informed consent in young people are also likely to be relevant to other areas of clinical practice.