AN Oxford grandmother who starved herself to death said before she died that she had “no alternative” given the UK’s laws against assisted suicide.

Jean Davies died on October 1, five weeks after first embarking on a fast to end her life – even though she was not terminally ill.

The 86-year-old right-to-die campaigner said she had suffered a range of medical conditions including fainting episodes and chronic back pain.

She described her fast as “hell” and “intolerable”.

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Ms Davies, who said her four children and two grandchildren supported her right to make her own choice on the matter, said no-one would choose to starve themselves to death “unless you thought your life was going to be so bad”.

Last week the Director of Public Prosecutions clarified the law on assisted suicide in the wake of the case of paralysed former builder Paul Lamb and Jane Nicklinson, the widow of Tony Nicklinson who had suffered locked-in syndrome.

Supreme Court justices ruled against the pair’s right for assisted suicide in June, but DPP Alison Saunders said the judges’ ruling allowed a clarity in the law around health care professionals.

She said the likelihood of them being prosecuted depended on their “specific and professional duty of care to the person in question”.


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