The case of Diane Pretty is an absolute scandal and a disgrace to a "civilised" society.

This hypocritical government is already practising euthanasia by the back door by denying thousands of elderly patients necessary treatment and operations.

Gordon Brown is an honourable man with the best possible intentions but his efforts to save the NHS will be practically useless. It is not surprising his fingernails are chewed down - he is probably at his wits' end. There is only one answer to the present situation - euthanasia, voluntary or otherwise.

I am aged 82 and can visualise a situation in the not-too-distant future when outraged mobs will storm the hospitals, holding doctors and nurses at gunpoint, then carry out a wholesale massacre of all incurable, infirm, elderly patients.

I wonder how many old disabled people fearful of finding themselves in a similar position to Diane Pretty will commit suicide when there is no real need for them to do so?

-Margery Watts, Isaacs Lane, Haywards Heath