Doctor Gave Dying Woman Lethal Drug

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28887, 6 May 1959, Page 15

Doctor Gave Dying Woman Lethal Drug

(Rec. 11 R.m.)

LONDON, May 5

A doctor said yesterday that he had given a lethal drug to a “devoted Christian lady” who was dying of cancer.

Dr. Maurice Millard, a 58-year-old general practitioner, made the disclosure at a meeting of the Burton-on-Trent Rotary Club. Last night he elaborated it in press interviews. He is a member of the Euthanasia Society, which was founded by his father. Dr. Killick Millard.

Last night, Dr. Millard, who lives in Leicester, said that the woman was a “very devout and religious old soul.” She had “discussed the question” with him on a number of occasions.

“She had very strong views about it and was very anxious that she should never be allowed to turn into a semi-corpse,” he said. He said that a patient had asked him, when still in good health, that if she ever contracted an incurable painful disease to give her a drug to put her to sleep.

Some time later the woman had contracted cancer and had asked to be given a lethal dose of a drug.

“What was I to do?” Dr. Millard said. “A strong feeling of compassion came over me and I gave her the drug. She went into a coma and passed peacefully away.”

Dr. Millard said: “I did it purely on compassionate grounds, and would do the same again under similar conditions.

“I have a completely clear conscience about it all. Every doctor who is in general practice must have had in the course of his career at least one of these experiences which do sometimes put one in a dilemma,” he said. A British Medical Association spokesman said: “No professional body is going to give carte blanche for deciding when to end

a life,” according to the ‘‘Daily Mail.” * “But doctors are frequently being called upon to give painkilling drugs in cases of incurable diseases. When the patient dies it is the disease which has killed, not the drugs.” The “Daily Mail” quoted Dr. Millard as .aying the woman had died two or three years ago. BRIGHTNESS OF SUN Increase In Last Five Years WASHINGTON, May 5. The sun has become 2 per cent, brighter—and probably correspondingly warmer—in the last five years, an astronomer reported last night. Dr. William Sinton, of Lowell Observatory, at Flagstaff, Texas, said measurements of the brightness of the planets Uranus and Neptune proved that the seemingly steady sun was actually a variable star. The observed 2 per cent, rise I between 1953 and 1958 might help ’ to unravel the mystery of the j earth’s ice ages. Dr. Sinton told a I science conference in Washington.' He said the increase in the sun’s radiant energy output was not' necessarily alarming. It did not mean the nearer planets would soon be turned to cinders. In the next half dozen years, he said, the , variation might well be in the other direction.