NATION IN BRIEF : NEW YORK : Panel Clears Doctor in Suicide Inquiry

A doctor who admitted helping a leukemia patient commit suicide was cleared of misconduct charges by a New York state health board. A three-member panel of the Board for Professional Medical Conduct ruled that the actions of Dr. Timothy Quill were “legal and ethically appropriate.” Quill, an internist at Genesee Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., wrote in the March 7 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine that he had prescribed barbiturates for a 45-year-old patient and made sure she knew how many pills to take to kill herself. The state health board found that Quill’s prescribing the barbiturates was not inappropriate because “he could not know with certainty what use a patient might make of the drugs he has prescribed.”