Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Case points up need for careful distinctions in palliative care

Stephan Bolton went to a newspaper with the story he killed his terminally ill wife Barbara Jean Jollimore-Bolton on January 22 by giving her an injection of two medications, but he now says he was following a doctor’s instructions and did not intend to kill her. 

Bolton blames an interaction between the morphine he usually gave her and a drug called Nozinan, saying he believes the doctor told him to inject her with the drug knowing it would react with the morphine and kill her. However, Dr. Peter Vaughan said the two drugs in question have been used together for many years in treating palliative patients.

“That combination of medications has been in use for a long time,” Vaughan said of morphine and Nozinan, noting morphine is effective at controlling pain, while Nozinan has been used for about five decades to control nausea and also acts as a pain reliever. They would be used together. We have no reason to believe at this point that anything out of the usual happened in this case.”

A police spokesman said Barbara Jollimore-Bolton’s death is being treated as “a suspicious death,” and the police will continue the investigation to decide whether charges will be laid. LifeSiteNews

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