John Bodkin Adams

John Bodkin Adams (1899 to 1983) was a British general practitioner whose career became one of the most debated cases in twentieth century medical and legal history. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died while in comas, a pattern judged worthy of investigation, and 132 of 310 patients had left him money or items in their wills. He was tried and acquitted of the murder of one patient in 1957, and a second murder count was withdrawn by the prosecution in what the presiding judge, Patrick Devlin, later described as an abuse of process. Adams was separately convicted of thirteen offences including prescription drug fraud, lying on cremation forms and obstructing a police search, was struck off by the General Medical Council in 1957 and was reinstated in 1961. His trial helped establish the doctrine of double effect, under which a doctor treating pain may lawfully shorten life as an unintended result, and it led to a change allowing defendants to request committal hearings in private.