Ashya King
In 2014 his parents took him from a British hospital to seek proton beam therapy for a brain tumour abroad, were arrested, then vindicated. The case sped the building of NHS proton centres.
Ashya King was five when he had surgery for medulloblastoma at Southampton General Hospital in 2014. His parents, Brett and Naghemeh King, disagreed with the plan for conventional radiotherapy and, in August 2014, took him out of the hospital to seek proton beam therapy, which the NHS was not then providing in the UK for his tumour type. A European arrest warrant led to their detention in Spain and a court fight; the warrant was withdrawn amid public outcry, and the NHS agreed to fund treatment at the Proton Therapy Center in Prague. His family later said he was cancer-free. The case brought the debate about parental choice and evidence into the open, and the first NHS high-energy proton centres opened at The Christie in Manchester in 2018 and at University College Hospital, London, in 2021. Because Ashya is a private individual, this record covers the public case only.