Am I breaking the law again?

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7453.1440-b

BMJ 2004;328:1440 (12 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7453.1440-b

Letter

Am I breaking the law again?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Huxtable refers to my arrest by the Isle of Manpolice last December for conspiring to assist in the possiblesuicide of my terminally ill Manx friend, Patrick Kneen.¹ WhenI finally saw him, Patrick was too ill to commit suicide, andhe died after being heavily sedated by his general practitioner.

However, when terminally ill people have travelled from theUnited Kingdom and where, with the help of Dignitas (an organisationbased in Zurich), they have committed suicide, the relativeswho assisted them have not been prosecuted in this country.

Since June 2003, when I joined Dignitas, I have advised threeother members in the United Kingdom, who are seriously ill,how they can get, from their doctors here, the medical reportsthat the Dignitas doctors require if an assisted suicide isto occur. I counselled one terminally ill person last Novemberon how to make her . . . [Full text of this article]

Michael Irwin, retired general practitioner

Cranleigh, Surrey GU6 8BZ michael-hk.irwin@virgin.net