It is outrageous that your recent article (see [2004] Gazette, 23 September, 39) should describe hydration and nutrition as 'medical treatment'. When you or I go out to dinner - or even have a crust of bread and a glass of water at home - is that 'medical treatment'?


Nutrition and hydration are no more than eating and drinking. Those of us who are able bodied can handle this for ourselves. Those who are ill or disabled may need help. Those who are seriously ill may need a feeding tube or a drip. One way or another we all need food and drink. These are not prescription medicines.


Those who are responsible for others - whether babies or the elderly or the sick - have a duty to feed and give water to those in their care (or in your article's obscurantist phraseology, provide them with nutrition and hydration). To fail to do so is negligent. To fail to do so deliberately is murder.



C R Fradd, Walker, Fradd & Hardy, New Milton, Hampshire