Scots doctor admits helping terminally ill commit suicide

Published on Sunday 26 January 2003 00:00

A SCOTTISH doctor has admitted deliberately helping eight terminally ill patients to commit suicide.

The GP revealed that he had used overdoses of sleeping pills or fatal morphine injections to carry out the mercy killings, it was reported last night.

The family doctor, from south-east Scotland, also claimed six fellow GPs had told him that they also had helped patients to die.

"These patients are people who had made their mind up. They were ready to go," said the doctor, who spoke anonymously to a London newspaper.

"I am completely happy I did the right thing. If they know it’s inevitable and they don’t want to spin it out, I think that is fine."

The debate over doctors’ roles in mercy killings has been reignited by the case of Reginald Crew, who last Monday travelled to Switzerland, where doctors helped him to die, because euthanasia is illegal in Britain.

The 74-year-old, who had motor neurone disease and was paralysed from the neck down was driven to the flat in Zurich, where he was given a fatal dose of barbiturates.

Under the 1961 Suicide Act, anyone who helps someone to die in the UK could face up to 14 years jail.

Police have revealed they intend to quiz Crew’s widow, Win, 71, over her part in his suicide, and in theory she could face prosecution if they decide she assisted her husband’s death.

Six years ago, Michael Irwin, a former GP and chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, admitted to having helped at least 50 people to die.

He was never prosecuted, though a few weeks later David Moor, a Newcastle GP who was spurred into revealing to police his role in the death of an 85-year-old patient terminally ill with colon cancer, was tried for murder.

He was acquitted, but the stress of the trial was blamed for his death from a heart attack two years ago.

A survey last week claimed that half of all UK doctors think patients who suffer from a terminal illness should be allowed assisted suicide.

However, some doctors remain firmly opposed to it.

Grant Kelly, a Chichester GP, said: "I can appreciate that there are patients who might want to shorten their lives, but I would not help them. I did not train for it and it is not part of my calling."