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LONDON, January 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Speaking to a group in Belfast last night, Mary Baroness Warnock, a leading voice in British bioethics, said that doctors who refuse to cooperate in assisted suicide are “genuinely wicked.” Following a theme of previous comments in which she said that the elderly and people with dementia have a “duty to die,” Warnock said, “There are doctors, we know, who don't pay any attention [to a patient’s desire for suicide]. “But that seems to me a genuinely wicked thing to do – to disregard what somebody had quite explicitly said, that he wants to...

When she said people with Alzheimer's should be able to appoint someone to request euthanasia for them, Britain's leading medical ethicist, Baroness Mary Warnock, caused a firestorm of controversy.   A similar, but little known, proposal was made by those in the forefront of Oregon's assisted-suicide law and the current Washington State initiative to legalize assisted suicide. The following open letter to Baroness Warnock explains how she will be far more likely to move toward her goal if she follows the Oregon model.   Dear Baroness, Your recent interview on a duty to die certainly caused a stir when you said you...

Baroness Warnock, Britain’s leading expert on medical ethics and a vocal supporter of euthanasia, has said that it would be wrong to give immunity from prosecution to relatives who help terminally ill patients to die abroad. Lady Warnock, 84, who recently provoked an outcry when she said that people suffering from dementia should be allowed to end their lives for the greater good, said that unless the ban on assisted suicides was also lifted in Britain, such a move would lead to a “two-tier death service”. “It would seem to me to be a blatant abuse to say we are...