Withdrawal of life support against the family's wishes!

Interesting case, just a few vague thoughts. Without seeing the judgment, it does seem very similar to Bland, particularly on the best interests point (apart from the fact that the family here did not support the withdrawing of life support).

My instinct, and similar to what you have said, is that the court will have got around this by employing the act/omission distinction. I imagine (as in Bland) that the court was prepared (by the backdoor, admittedly) to allow for so-called 'passive' euthanasia by construing the 'best interests' act as an omission. I'm not sure about how far 'best interests' was pursued in Nicklinson or Lamb: of course, those were cases more related to 'active' euthanasia in relation to the arguments put about assisting a suicide/DPP's policy on prosecution, and the issue of necessity as a defence to murder (where done by a positive act).

I'm not sure if the concept of 'best interests' arises in the DPP's guidance re: factors weighing in favour of/against prosecution. Re: murder, if 'best interests' could be employed as part of any future necessity defence, it would presumably still require the courts to address (cross?) the fraught policy/legal line currently drawn between those two forms of euthanasia. But there may be an academic argument there that might be developed! Elsewhere, I note that a prosecution for assisted suicide has just been announced, so it seems euthanasia will remain in the public eye: blog.cps.gov.uk/2014/09/one-woman-charged-with-encouraging-or-assisting-suicide.html.