When the law is still unclear over the illegality of a spouse assisting a terminally ill partner to end his or her life, the circumstances of the death of Sharon Mevsimier suggest some uncomfortable possibilities.
    Mrs Mevsimier, who is under 5’ and weighs 45 stone, was in hospital undergoing intensive (and expensive) medical care as a result of her self-inflicted obesity. She had claimed shortly before she died that she had “been left to die. If I was anorexic I would get proper help but no one has sympathy for obese people.”
    She has, it is reported in the Daily Mail, been receiving 24 hour care since 2005, including three months at the Priory Clinic at £5k per month, paid for by the NHS.
    She and her family were warned that as she was on a strictly controlled diet, they should not give her any extra food, or she would risk death.
    Nevertheless, this instruction was ignored and the family smuggled in fish and chips and buckets of fried chicken for her to eat. As a direct result, Mrs Mevsimier died. The family must have known that their actions would lead to her death, that they were, in effect, poisoning her.
    On the face of it, the DPP has a strong case for bringing a prosecution for manslaughter, if not murder.

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