On 2 December last year Roy Killingsworth , a 35-year-old psychiatrist dying slowly from a lung illness, asked his doctors to bring about his death. They obliged and he died the following afternoon. In the inventive language of California where this happened, Dr Killingsworth ' checked out'.
Did Dr Killingsworth's doctors behave ethically,- lawfully or even humanely? Were they respecting his right to self-determination or executing his death wish? Roy Kiliingsworth 's case highlights dramatically the host of problems facing patients and physicians everywhere at a time when there seems to be no limit to what medicine can do, even in the face of death.
Ian Kennedy , lecturer in law at King's College, London, explores Roy Killingsworth 's story and raises the questions of ethics, morality and law that surround this and similar cases.-
Producer DAVID PATERSON