A well-regarded young veterinarian in Winchester, England, took his own life with a drug used to euthanize pets at least partly because he was disturbed by wealthy customers asking him to put down their animals unnecessarily, The Independent newspaper reported. The vet’s suicide has prompted a coroner to warn about the easy access to dangerous drugs in the veterinary profession.
The Winchester Coroner’s Court in Hampshire was told John Ellis, 35, tricked a veterinary nurse at a former employer into giving him the deadly medication by falsely claiming he needed it to put down a friend’s “large dog”. He then used the drug to end his own life on November 6, 2022.
The BBC said Hampshire County Assistant Coroner Simon Burge noted in his inquest report on the vet’s suicide that “adequate controls” were not in place to prevent the misuse of such substances, and called upon the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons to take action. In a ‘prevention of further deaths’ report, Burge said Dr Ellis was given the drugs “without any checks” and “without scrutiny”. He wrote: “He was allowed to walk out of the veterinary surgery unaccompanied, with the drug, which he then used to take his own life.”
Dr Ellis’s father Robert told the inquest the ease of access to the medication that killed his son made him feel as if his son had access to a “loaded gun”.
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Dr Ellis’s mother Tina, a Conservative councillor in Fareham town, told the coroner’s inquest he felt “destroyed” that people drove up to his clinic in expensive cars, but were unwilling to spend money to help their animals. On the other hand, the veterinarian told her, poorer clients would be willing to do anything to save their pets, but often it was too late.
His mother said he had told her he couldn’t sleep. He would sleep in his car when he was on call, rather than go home and have to drive all the way to the clinic in an emergency, and was under financial pressure as well, she told the inquest.
Dr Ellis, who was working at the Anderson Moores Veterinary Specialists, a practice near the city, was also experiencing a great deal of stress in his private life. The inquest heard that for the previous two years, he had been cheating on his partner of 12 years with a younger man. Alex MacDonald, director of Animed, the practice from where the vet acquired the drugs he used to end his life, told the inquest Dr Ellis was “almost living a double life”.
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