ABSTRACT
Another form of assisted suicide is where a doctor furnishes the means to a patient who is not dying to kill himself. Hence, a doctor may provide a pill to a patient which the patient then takes, in the full knowledge that it will kill him, but the act of swallowing the pill breaks the chain of causation between the doctor’s act of providing the pill and the patient’s death. The doctor would then be guilty of an offence under s 2 of the Suicide Act 1961, which deals with criminal liability for aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the suicide of another.
