A doctor has called for a change in the law on assisted suicide as he told how he had helped patients to end their lives.
Retired GP Dr Iain Kerr told The Herald he had given an elderly couple a prescription for sleeping tablets so they could kill themselves together,
The 66-year-old is also reported to have told another pensioner how many antidepressants he would need to take to end his life before visiting him while the drugs took effect.
Dr Kerr, who used to work at the Williamwood medical centre in Clarkston, East Renfrewshire, insisted he believed his actions at the time were in the best interest of the patients.
He told the paper: “I think there should be a change in the law because my personal experience is that there are people suffering distressing symptoms at the end of life which cannot all be palliated, and while people should be offered all the available treatments, there may be times when their preferred course of action will be suicide or to be assisted to die.”
He added: “I feel the law is out of step with what is socially acceptable to a large number of people.”
Dr Kerr was suspended from practising medicine for six months in 2008 after being found guilty of misconduct following a General Medical Council hearing.
That found that he had prescribed a businesswoman only known as Patient A with sodium amytal in 1998 “solely for the purpose of ending her life”.
Veteran politician Margo MacDonald is making a second attempt to change the law to allow assisted suicide. A previous bid to give people the right to choose when to die was defeated at Holyrood.