This story dates back to mid-May, but it is a compelling blend of two of BioEdge’s main interests, IVF and euthanasia. A celebrity chef once known as the Calorie Commando has been charged in Santa Monica, California, with hiring two homeless men to kill his wife. Nothing unusual about that.

However, Juan Carlos Cruz’s motivation may have been unique, according to the tabloids. Two sources close the couple told CNN that their 20-year struggle to have a child had overwhelmed them. Lengthy, expensive and unsuccessful IVF treatment left Cruz’s wife, Jennifer Campbell, deeply depressed. CNN said that “she may have wanted to end her life but that as a devout Roman Catholic, she believed suicide was a sin”. Good Morning America even ventured a line of defence: “The possible motive, then, was that Cruz may have been acting out of mercy — trying to help end his wife’s suffering.”

However, celebrity criminal defence attorney Roy Black told Good Morning America that even if it was a potential mercy killing, this would not get Cruz off the hook. “Otherwise the landscape would be full of dead spouses,” he observed. 

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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