A Glasgow doctor who gave sleeping pills to a patient who had considered suicide, knowing she could use them to kill herself, has been found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC) and, as a result, could be struck off the medical register.

A Glasgow doctor who gave sleeping pills to a patient who had considered suicide, knowing she could use them to kill herself, has been found guilty of misconduct by the General Medical Council (GMC) and, as a result, could be struck off the medical register.

The case, in which Dr Iain Kerr prescribed a drug normally used only for cases of severe insomnia to an 87-year-old patient who told him she was considering suicide because of her deteriorating medical condition, has reopened the difficult debate on whether assisted suicide should be legal in the UK.

The GMC's ruling suggests it thinks the rules should not be blurred.

Those who believe that doctors or relatives should be allowed to help people with a terminal or degenerative illness to end their life when they are physically unable to do so themselves argue that this is the most merciful course. In addition to ending suffering, it would allow people who fear dying in pain a final farewell to their family and a dignity in seeking what Keats called "easeful death".

The alternative argument is that more sophisticated pain control and palliative care should mean that nature can take its course without causing agony. That there are people who fear this cannot be guaranteed is evident from the individuals who have sought court rulings to exonerate relatives who help them to die from legal action and the small but increasing number who travel to clinics in countries where assisted dying is legal.

The issue is particularly acute for doctors, whose vocation and professional ethic is to cure and prolong life, not deliberately cut it short. The memory of Harold Shipman, the doctor turned murderer, who killed more than 200 patients over a period of 23 years, is the spectre that hangs over this debate as a warning that dispensing with a final legal safeguard is fraught with danger. He was not stopped, however, by the fact that he was breaking the law.

Margo MacDonald, the Independent MSP, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, has embarked on a brave crusade to legalise assisted suicide.

As we have seen with the case of Dr Kerr, the law as it stands muddies the line between compassion and criminal behaviour. It is time that this issue was openly debated, because any change must be informed by public and expert opinion.