Letter: `Sanctity' of life

Sir: Professor Singer's concern is how to end severely disabled lives in a kindly rather than cruel fashion.

If I, as a veterinary surgeon, were to end the life of a suffering animal by starving it or allowing it to die from an untreated respiratory infection, I would expect to be struck off the Veterinary Register for cruelty. Yet these are the methods advocated for children by the ethics adviser of the British Medical Association.

Why, I wonder, should we be kinder to dogs than to children?

LEONARD BLACK FRCVS

Wonersh, Surrey