Thaindian News

London, June 16 (IANS) An anorexic woman, who started controlling her eating habits at 11 and was described as having an “obsessive fear of weight gain”, should be force-fed, a British court has ordered.

The 32-year-old, a former medical student from Wales, has not eaten for over a year. She is in a community hospital under a palliative care regime whose purpose is to “allow her to die in comfort”, The Sun reported.

She had a Body Mass Index (BMI) - a calculation of a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in metres - of 11.3 when last measured whereas a healthy figure is about 20.

Justice Peter Jackson, at London’s Court of Protection, ruled that it was in the “extremely severe” anorexic’s best interests to be fed “forcibly if necessary”.

Justice Jackson added: “Albeit gravely unwell, she is not incurable. She does not seek death, but she does not want to eat or to be fed.

“She sees her life as pointless and wants to be allowed to make her own choices, realising that refusal to eat must lead to her death.”