London - The admission by two British doctors that they helped dozens of terminally ill patients to end their suffering by committing suicide has rekindled Britain's long-running right-to-die debate.
"They wanted to die and I helped them to do it," Dr Michael Irwin, former medical director of the United Nations, said in an interview with the Sunday Times. "I have a clear conscience."
Dr Irwin, who heads Britain's Voluntary Euthanasia Society (VAS), said he did what he did "out of pity" for his suffering patients.
General practitioner Dr Dave Moor subsequently told the press that he, too, had assisted patients to die on "many occasions", two of them last week.
The revelations came just two weeks after the British Medical
Association (BMA) voted at its annual meeting in Edinburgh to oppose any legalisation of euthanasia.
Britain's Suicide Act of 1961 makes it a crime, punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment, to aid or abet in the suicide of another person. - (AFP)