NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, England, March 1 (UPI) -- Morphine is too short-acting and well-tolerated to hasten death, argues a British doctor in this week's British Medical Journal.
Kelly Taylor, a terminally ill woman, went to court in Britain earlier this month asking to be sedated into unconsciousness with morphine even though she thought it would hasten her death.
But Claud Regnard, director of palliative care at St. Oswald's Hospice at Newcastle upon Tyne in England, wrote that evidence over the past 20 years has repeatedly shown that morphine's sedative effects wear off quickly, making it useless to sustain unconsciousness.
What's more, it has a wide range of therapeutic doses that are well-tolerated making death unlikely, and toxic doses produce distressing agitation that would create a very unpleasant demise.
He added that these facts are well-known in Holland, where the drug is almost never used for euthanasia under the double-effect law, which allows a doctor to administer treatment that hastens death as long as it is given to relieve pain rather than to kill.
Regnard suggested that doctors facing the double-effect dilemma of controlling severe pain at the risk of killing the patient contact a palliative care specialist who can manage pain effectively with drugs suited to each patient's needs, and who know how to help people work through fear, depression, and spiritual distress.
The letter appears at http://press.psprings.co.uk/bmj/march/ltr440.pdf.
