The role of medical manslaughter must be reconsidered, says leading lawyer

The role of criminal law and medical manslaughter in cases where doctors make mistakes must be rethought, a leading professor of health law and ethics has said.

Queens Council barrister Ian Kennedy led a review into the breast surgeon Ian Paterson who was sentenced to 15 years in prison last year for carrying out “extensive, life changing operations for no medically justifiable reason.”1

Speaking at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh’s triennial conference in Edinburgh on 22 March, Kennedy said that the law caused …