BRITAIN:A terminally ill English woman has initiated a potentially ground-breaking legal bid to force doctors to let her die.
Kelly Taylor (30), who has been given less than a year to live, asserts that doctors are breaching her human rights laws by refusing to provide treatment which would lead to her death.
She wants them vastly to increase her morphine dose to sedate her into a coma-like state. The morphine alone could kill Ms Taylor, who is frail and endures constant pain.
But under a second stage of her plan to end her life, a "living will" would come into force and doctors would be asked not to provide artificial food or hydration.
Physicians have refused to provide the treatment, saying it amounts to euthanasia. Lawyers for severely disabled Ms Taylor began arguing in the High Court in London yesterday that the European Convention on Human Rights bans "inhuman or degrading treatment" and by refusing her steps which would end her life, the doctors were in breach of the convention.
She suffers from the heart and lung condition Eisenmenger's syndrome. She also has a spinal condition, Klippel-Feil syndrome. Her doctors have been unable to find a combination of drugs to relieve her pain, as she is allergic to many of those normally used to treat Eisenmenger's.
Before the case began, Ms Taylor said: "I have made the decision because enough is enough. I don't want to suffer any more. I'm not depressed, I've never been depressed. I am a happy person, but my illness is now at the point where I don't want to deal with it any more.
"My consultant has told me that he does not expect me to live for another year. In that time I will deteriorate and that deterioration will become quite undignified. I want to avoid that.
"I hope the court will come to the conclusion that the decision by my GP and hospice was unlawful and that I can be sedated to the point that I become unconscious. And secondary to that, that my living will should then come into effect so that I can die."
In July last year, she attempted to starve herself to death as an act of voluntary euthanasia. After 19 days she was in so much pain she decided it was less dignified than her medical condition and began eating again.