Warnock calls for courts to sanction mercy killings

A leading authority on medical ethics is calling for the courts to be allowed to sanction "mercy killings" when patients are suffering terminal illnesses. Baroness Warnock says the case of Diane Pretty, who lost her legal battle to allow her husband to help her to commit suicide, has exposed the "irrationality" of the law.

The distinguished philosopher and chairwoman of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology had said legalising euthanasia might lead to abuse by doctors and patients' families. Now she believes courts can provide proper safeguards.

"Provided each case was treated separately, and courts had to decide whether to accept the medical evidence, to make such a change would not embark on the slippery slope," Lady Warnock says.

She urges ministers to acknowledge "there is such a thing as terminal illness where palliative care is incapable of making life tolerable for the patient".

Writing in Counsel, the official magazine for barristers in England and Wales, Lady Warnock says Mrs Pretty died "in the way she dreaded most, because no one could legally ensure she died otherwise. People in her position will not be comforted by those who say they will pray for a miracle; nor by those, even some doctors, who pretend there is nothing certain in medicine."

Lady Warnock says if the law permits the termination of a pregnancy when the foetus is so malformed it will be a burden to the child if born, the law should allow euthanasia. "It seems irrational to deny death, subject to the same condition, to someone who, unlike the foetus, is able to make her own judgement that her life is intolerable."

Under Lady Warnock's proposal, an application for euthanasia could be made to the court only with the support of two doctors and only in cases where the terminally ill patient's life could not be made tolerable by palliative care.

Mrs Pretty, 43, died in May after she lost a campaign for the right to die. David Calvert-Smith QC, the director of public prosecutions, had told Mrs Pretty that her husband, Brian, might be jailed for up to 14 years if he helped her die. The Prettys took their case to the High Court, the Lords and the European Court of Human Rights.

Lady Warnock contrasts Mrs Pretty's case with that of Miss B, a terminally ill patient granted the right to die after the High Court in London ruled that doctors had failed to respect her right to refuse treatment. Lady Warnock describes the doctors' arguments for refusing to concede to Miss B's wish as suspect.

Even after Lady Justice Butler-Sloss had ruled that the doctors had acted against the law they could still not agree to "kill" her. In the end she had to be moved to a second hospital where other doctors did what she wanted.

Last month Lady Warnock backed the cloning of babies to treat infertile couples, saying there were no serious ethical obstacles to human reproductive cloning for strictly medical reasons if the technique could be shown to be safe.