Nicklinson case is about 'right to kill', says Royal College of Physicians

Two men suffering from locked-in syndrome have lost their legal fight to be helped to die.

Tony Nicklinson and a man known only as Martin - both left paralysed after a stroke - had argued that doctors should be allowed to end their lives without punishment.

The judges said they were tragic cases that raised "legal and ethical questions of the most difficult kind" but they said the law was clear that voluntary euthanasia was murder.

Professor John Saunders, chair of the Ethics Committee for the Royal College of Physicians, said the case was about a right to kill not about a right to die.