Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics Faculty Lecture

The Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics will host its first 2018 Faculty Lecture to be presented by Professor David McQuoid-Mason.

McQuoid-Mason is from the Centre for Socio-Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

In this lecture, McQuoid-Mason will argue that public health officials and MECs for health who allow cancer patients to die because of a failure to renew service contracts for hospital oncology machines – without providing a viable alternative – may be found guilty of having the ‘eventual intention’ to cause such deaths and convicted of murder if the other elements of the crime are satisfied. Should the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) decline to prosecute them for murder they may still be prosecuted for culpable homicide. To succeed in such a prosecution the NPA would have to prove that reasonable public health officials in their position would have foreseen that a failure to renew service contracts for oncology machines at a hospital might deprive scores of cancer patients of early access to oncology services and result in their deaths. The lecture will end with an interactive discussion in which the audience will be invited to consider whether these principles could apply to the Life Esidimeni tragedy in Gauteng.

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