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Abstract
Consent to medical treatment cases discloses a profound medical and legal ambivalence about a patient's right to refuse life-saving medical intervention. The principle of self-determination has been exposed as shaky rhetoric. Reactions to a decision to authorise a Caesarian section on a non-consenting woman in labour have been largely critical. This article suggests two ways in which the debate should be reconsidered: first, that refusal of life-saving treatment cannot be conceived solely in terms of individual prerogative; and secondly, that criminal law should not be the fulcrum on which fundamental issues of life, death and modern medicine are balanced.