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JUDICIAL APPROVAL FOR INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In the Court of Appeal today {Friday 28th July) Mr. Justice Hidden and Mr. Justice Holman, while reducing the prison sentences on disabled David Glass' aunts and uncle who assaulted hospital doctors and saved his life, repeatedly endorsed the doctors' decision to end it, saying "Every single day somewhere in the country hard decisions are taken... Hospital staff have to be protected." Two years later, safe at home, David is doing well.

Counsel for the relatives admitted in Court that in the Portsmouth trial, the Crown had been anxious to limit the medical evidence. (A paediatrician willing to give evidence for the defence was never called.) However, one of the hospital doctors admitted: 'If diamorphine had been continued, David would have died.'

David's mother Carol Glass stated after the judgment today: "The wrong people are in prison."

A spokesman for ALERT commented: "If doctors are free to decide when to arrange their patients' deaths and no one may stop them, why was Dr. Shipman convicted for making this 'hard decision' fifteen times over? Perhaps it was thought wrong because his victims were not disabled?

"The judges' remarks are bad news for all vulnerable patients - the disabled, the frail elderly, young victims of accidents. Apparently, whenever we need care, we lose the right to live

"In Nazi Germany, special needs children were collected from their families and taken away 'for treatment', and their ashes were sent back in an urn. Britain seems to have started on the same road."

Dr. Tony Cole FRCP, DCH, commented: "The presumption in favour of life does not seem to apply if you are severely disabled."

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