A British expert on euthanasia has called for the legalisation of euthanasia after estimating that 18,000 people are secretly killed each year by doctors. Dr Hazel Biggs, of the University of Kent, based her figures on extrapolations of figures from the Netherlands and Australia and on interviews with British doctors. What this says to me is that we know these practices are going on, but they are completely unregulated," she says. "We don't know how many people are volunteers or non-volunteers, and maybe because of that the law ought to be changed so that people can give voluntary consent, which will give them more protection." It appears that as the British population ages, more doctors are taking private decisions to speed the death of terminally ill patients, normally by increasing drug doses.