When morphine reaches the pain receptors it binds to them causing any pain messages to be dampened down. It also depresses the rate at which we breathe and can cause constipation. This action is more apparent if the morphine is given to someone who is not in pain.”A doctor should determine the appropriate dosage by a ’suck it and see’ method. They would start using painkillers such as paracetamol and Nurofen to give them some idea what was needed. Injections of morphine and diamorphine are most commonly given in hospital emergency rooms, operating rooms, coronary care wards and intensive care.”The amount of injections that a GP gives has gone down partly because of the use of paramedics,” he said.Yesterday a coroner criticised by families of suspected victims on the opening day said he was “saddened” by their comments.

John Pollard came under criticism for the way he opened and adjourned 228 inquests without notifying relatives. Richard Lissack QC, speaking on behalf of the Tameside Family Support Group, said his clients had been “outraged” when they discovered the procedure had been dealt with in private.Mr Pollard said: “I don’t think it is in anyone’s interests to involve ourselves in public recriminations and sparring However, I have been saddened by what has been said. Throughout the Shipman inquiry I have tried at all times to, wherever possible, ensure the families’ needs have been catered for.”The inquiry is also seeking information on a further 152 cases, though Dame Janet stressed some may not have been suspicious.The hearing was adjourned until today when Dr John Grenville, an expert on GPs, is due to give evidence.. The jury at the Jill Dando murder trial was yesterday urged not to allow sympathy they held for the television presenter to sway their judgment when considering the evidence. The jury at the Jill Dando murder trial was yesterday urged not to allow sympathy they held for the television presenter to sway their judgment when considering the evidence.
Michael Mansfield, QC, in his closing speech for the defence, said that Ms Dando had a “place in everybody’s hearts” and likened public mourning of her death to that of Diana, Princess of Wales.He described the presenter’s murder as an “epic occasion” worthy of comparison with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Princess of Wales’ fatal car crash and said its media coverage had eclipsed Britain’s involvement in the Kosovo war.Claiming that the Crown’s case against his client, Barry George, was “non-existent”, Mr Mansfield urged the jury to resist the temptation to “make somebody pay” for the murder.The defence barrister said that allowing sympathy for Ms Dando to sway their judgement would do “no justice” to the 37-year-old’s memory.Mr Mansfield stressed the presumption of innocence in English law and described George’s right not to give evidence from the witness box as the “golden thread of British justice”.Mr Mansfield told the jury: “I don’t know whether any of you fall into the category of people who can say ‘I remember exactly where I was during the Cuban Missile Crisis or when Princess Diana died’.”And ‘I remember what I was doing when the announcement of Jill Dando’s death came over television and radio’.

Do you remember what you were doing? Some people do.”In a sense, what happened in this case has assumed the magnitude of these epic occasions because again, quite rightly, she had a place in everybody’s hearts and minds and on their television screens.”She was a central figure in a lot of people’s lives such that for several days so significant was this atrocity that it eclipsed on national television and radio on the news the war in which this country was engaged at that time – the Kosovan war.”He said it would be reasonable to expect some jurors to have “very strong feelings” about the case and asked them to be careful not to allow their consideration of the evidence to be influenced by emotions.To avoid “injustice”, he urged the jury to examine the evidence as “objectively and carefully as humanly possible.”Mr Mansfield said that the jury should be able to say: “I am sure that this man pulled the trigger of that single shot.”He told them that if they believed, as the defence has claimed, that the killing was or may have been the work of a professional hitman, they should acquit the defendant.He claimed that the prosecution was asking them to convict on the strength of unreliable identification evidence.The court has heard that Ms Dando, 37, was shot dead as she crouched on her doorstep at 29 Gowan Avenue on 26 April 1999.. The killers of Merseyside toddler Jamie Bulger are to be released on parole, the Government has decided.. The killers of Merseyside toddler Jamie Bulger are to be released on parole, the Government announced.
The Parole Board recommended that Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, now aged 18, should be released on life licences.The result of parole hearings were confimed in a Common written reply by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary.Venables and Thompson appeared before the Parole Board this week which had to decide if they still represented a danger to the public.Former Home Office minister and Merseyside MP George Howarth tabled a question for Mr Blunkett asking “when he will receive the Parole Board’s decision … and if he will make a statement?”Venables’ parole hearing took place at a secret location on Monday and Tuesday, followed by Thompson’s two–day appearance at a different venue.The partners in the February 1993 murder could both be freed within days if the panel rules they are no longer a danger.They were just 10 when they abducted two–year–old James from the Strand shopping precinct in Bootle, Merseyside, before torturing him and battering him to death on a railway line.Grainy security camera images showed the toddler being led off by the hand to a violent death.The crime shocked the world, and many were appalled by footage of adults howling abuse at the young suspects after their arrest.Last October the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, effectively ended the boys’ tariff – the minimum period they must spend in custody.He ruled that it would not benefit the boys to spend time in what he dubbed the “corrosive atmosphere” of a young offenders’ institution.Once they reach their 19th birthdays in August, Venables and Thompson would have to move from local authority secure units in which they have spent the last eight years and four months, and into young offenders’ institutions.If freed, the teenagers have been granted an open–ended High Court injunction protecting their anonymity when they are released from detention with new identities.Family Division President Dame Elizabeth Butler–Sloss said the two had to be protected due to a “real possibility of serious physical harm and possible death from vengeful members of the public or from the Bulger family”.The Parole Board panel – comprising a judge, psychiatrist and independent member – must consider whether it is “no longer necessary for the protection of the public that the offender continues to be detained”.They spent this week hearing representations from the killers’ solicitors.The members were able to ask Venables and Thompson questions, as was a barrister representing the Home Secretary.Psychiatric and other reports from the trial were considered, together with up–to–date reports from doctors and criminologists.They also reviewed the killers’ school records and considered any further offending that may have taken place during their detention.If freed, the pair will be “on licence” for life. Probation officers will be in constant touch to ensure they are adjusting to life outside and remaining mentally stable..