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June 8, 2006

Call for Coercive Euthanasia

Not surprising:

One of the country's leading experts on medical ethics today calls for doctors to be able to end the lives of some terminally ill patients "swiftly, humanely and without guilt" - even if they have not given consent.

Len Doyal, emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London, takes the euthanasia debate into new and highly contentious territory. He says doctors should recognise that they are already killing patients when they remove feeding tubes from those whose lives are judged to be no longer worth living. Some will suffer a "slow and distressing death" as a result.

It would be better if their lives were ended without this unnecessary delay, Professor Doyal writes in an article in Clinical Ethics, published by the Royal Society of Medicine. He calls for the law and professional guidance to be changed.

Posted by tim at June 8, 2006 12:17 AM

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