Mary Warnock euthanasia debate in London, October 2010

Mary Warnock

Moral philosopher, life peer and former Member of House of Lords Select Committee on Euthanasia

Baroness Warnock is an outspoken proponent of assisted suicide and has called the refusal of doctors to help patients who wish to die “genuinely wicked”. A leading philosopher, she was made a life peer in 1985, was a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Euthanasia and chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology. Her books include Easeful Death: Is there a case for assisted dying? and Making Babies: Is there a right to have children? Previously, Warnock was Head Mistress of Oxford High School for six years, the Talbot Research Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1972 to 1976, a Senior Research Fellow at St Hugh’s College, Oxford from 1976 to 1984 and Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1986 to 1989. Her philosophical interests include morals, law and aesthetics, and her philosophical heroes are Aristotle and Hume.