|
Euthanasia doctor cleared
01/02/2007 23:59 - (SA)
Rome - An Italian medical board on Thursday cleared a physician who disconnected the respirator of a paralysed man who had sought to
die, an Italian news agency said.
Dr Mario Riccio in December assisted in the death of
Piergiorgio Welby, a 60-year-old writer with muscular dystrophy who
was at the centre of a right-to-die campaign in this Roman Catholic
nation.
The medical board in Cremona, a northern Italian city where
Riccio is based, opened an investigation shortly afterward to
decide whether to bring a case against the doctor and referred the
question to its disciplinary commission.
On Thursday, the board decided unanimously that Riccio had done
nothing wrong, said board president Mario Bianchi, according to the
ANSA news agency.
Neither Riccio nor the medical board could immediately be
reached for comment.
Riccio faced sanctions ranging from a warning to expulsion, a
measure that would bar him from the medical profession.
Riccio and Welby's family have said the decision to disconnect
the respirator conformed with a patient's constitutional right to
refuse treatment. Anti-euthanasia campaigners and some conservative
politicians have described Welby's death as murder.
- Reuters
|
News
