Scottish Doctor admits assisting patients to die

A retired Scottish doctor has admitted in a newspaper interview that he supplied three patients with lethal medication so that they could end their lives. He made his confession as a way of supporting an assisted suicide bill before the Scottish Parliament. Dr Iain Kerr, 66, told the Scottish Herald that he had once advised a chronically ill retiree how to take enough antidepressants to die and gave married couple in their 80s sleeping pills. Both of these happened some time ago. He believes that he acted in the best interest of his patients. "I think there should be a change in the law because my personal experience is that there are people suffering distressing symptoms at the end of life which cannot all be palliated, and while people should be offered all the available treatments, there may be times when their preferred course of action will be suicide or to be assisted to die," he said. "I feel the law is out of step with what is socially acceptable to a large number of people," he added. His philosophy is uncomplicated. "The worst thing about death is not being alive. If being alive is not a bunch of cherries, what is wrong with embracing death?" The Scottish police is looking into the public confession. However, Dr Kerr is well known as a campaigner for assisted suicide and euthanasia. In 2008, the General Medical Council suspended him for six months for misconduct after he supplied an elderly patient with sleeping pills to kill herself. It described his actions as "inappropriate, irresponsible, liable to bring the profession into disrepute and not in your patient's best interest". In Scotland there is no law banning assisted suicide, so the legal situation is murky. The Crown Office spokeswoman said "Dr Kerr was investigated in the past in respect of his involvement in a number of deaths which were referred to in today's press. We have instructed the police to make enquiries into whether there is any new evidence available. Any new evidence will be considered by the Crown counsel". Dr Kerr was also criticised by the president of the UK's leading lobby group for assisted suicide, Sir Graeme Catto, a former president of the General Medical Council. "We simply do not condone healthcare professionals from medicine or nursing or any other group taking matters into their own hands. In Iain Kerr's case that is what he did." ht to BioEdge

Three parent babies - no longer 'playing God'

Britain is likely to become the first country to allow "three-parent babies", according to our  science reporter Nick Collins. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has recommended that the process – which involves taking a donor's egg and replacing its nucleus with that of the would-be mother, before undergoing IVF – be made legal for people trying to have children.

It's "three parents" only in that the DNA in the child's mitochondria (the little ex-bacteria which live in our cells and provide energy) will come from the donor, rather than the mother. As Nick points out, that makes up around 0.02 per cent of the total DNA in the cell, and is entirely separate from the nuclear DNA. But what's interesting is why the HFEA is recommending it: not only because it's safe, but because after a major consultation, it found that "there is broad support" for the procedure among the public.

I find that interesting because it's another step taken along the "playing God" route. IVF itself and test-tube babies were once thought of as playing God, but they're standard now. Stem cell research was playing God, but has become more accepted. Genetic engineering is still viewed with a bit of the Biblical fear, but steadily it's becoming more widespread.

As I've written plenty of times before, the "powers we dare not mess with" thing is as old as humanity: I dare say the first people who made fire were warned that they shouldn't meddle with things beyond their ken.But as Douglas Adams said and as I've also written before, technologies that are around when you're born are just ordinary; techologies invented before you turn about 35 are revolutionary and exciting; technologies invented after you turn about 35 are unnatural and wrong. Enough people must have been born since genetic modification became a useable technology for the balance to have shifted into the first two categories. Presumably the balance will shift even further in the next few decades, until mitochondrial replacement technologies – and people with "third parents" – are no more remarkable than contact lenses or artificial hips.

The really interesting question is: what's next? Will human cloning start moving from the basket labelled "unacceptable affront to nature" into the one saying "controversial technology"? And from there, one day, to "standard practice"?