Mother is awarded £9m for “wrongful birth” after GP error

A mother has been awarded £9m (€10m; $12m) in compensation after a GP’s negligence resulted in her giving birth to a severely disabled child.1 The mother, Meadows, was awarded the sum for the wrongful birth of her son, who has severe haemophilia and autism.

Meadows has a nephew with haemophilia who was born in 2006 and she wanted to avoid having a child with the condition. In August 2006 she consulted a GP who arranged blood tests. But the tests she was given could establish only whether a patient had haemophilia and not whether she was a carrier of the gene. To obtain that information, she would have had to be referred to a haematologist for genetic testing.

Later …