A UK general practitioner has admitted to killing patients based on “compassion.” From the story:
Dr Howard Martin, once feared to be a “second Harold Shipman” [a UK physician mass murderer], told The Daily Telegraph that he gave what proved to be fatal doses of painkillers to elderly and terminally ill patients. But he said he only acted out of “Christian compassion” and was merely trying to limit their suffering rather than “playing God”. He disclosed that, in two cases, he hastened the deaths of patients without their permission, while one of those to whom he administered a final injection was his son, Paul, 31, when he was dying from cancer in May 1988.
Dr Martin, 75, spoke out as the General Medical Council struck him off for professional misconduct, ruling that he had hastened the deaths of 18 patients in “egregious, despicable and dangerous” conduct. He accepted that his confession put him at risk of “spending the rest of my life in prison” if it prompted police to reopen his case…But Dr Martin said he decided to speak out to call for reform of a system of care, which – he claims – takes the “soft” option of confining the terminally ill to hospitals and hospices rather than allowing them the “dignity” of dying at home with their loved ones.
This is murder most foul. And his excuse lacks substance since hospice care has been offered in homes in the UK since 1969, as pioneered by the great medical humanitarian, Dame Cecily Saunders—an adamant opponent of assisted suicide/euthanasia.
Question: Will the prosecutor—who has basically said that assisted suicides will not be prosecuted when based on compassion and free choice—prosecute these euthanasia killings, both voluntary and involuntary? If not, it will destroy the precarious protections that remain in the UK to protect the elderly, dying, disabled, and seriously ill from such medicalized killing.
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