In a recent case, the Court of Appeal distinguished clearly the clinician’s role in identifying the risks and complications inherent in an intervention from the patient’s role in deciding which risks she is willing to run.

‘Competent minors’ successfully refuse treatment in the NHS countless times every day.

Encourage patients not to leave untreated.

But all life is an experiment.

Advance decisions allow an adult to refuse lifesaving treatment in a future where they envisage they may lack capacity to deliver that refusal personally.

Nearly twenty years ago, a court was faced with an agonising decision: whether the proposed separation of conjoined twins was lawful.

All those in clinical professions seek consent for what would otherwise be an unlawful touch. As citizens contemplate body modification, are there interventions which cannot be made lawful by consent?