My professor father thought it morally right to kill himself as Parkinson’s took hold

The family of a world-renowned professor told today how he killed himself before his debilitating illness took control.

Professor Philip Adey, 73, a senior lecturer at King’s College London and an “intellectual giant”, took his life on January 31 after his health became increasingly poor.

He suffered from Parkinson’s Plus, a syndrome similar to Parkinson’s but with additional debilitating features.

Professor Adey’s son Gideon said his father had spoken about his belief that it was “morally right” for people to be allowed to decide when to end their lives but recognised there were legal difficulties in enabling euthanasia.

Mr Adey, 44, said: “Assisted suicide was a thing that he and I agreed was a good thing, but neither of us could think of a way you could legislate for it.”

He added he was “shocked but not surprised” when he heard the news of his father’s suicide. “It’s exactly what I hope I’d have the strength to do myself one day if necessary.”

Mr Adey, a media buyer from Pinner, said: “My father didn’t expect the illness to progress as quickly as it did. He wasn’t in any pain but his body was giving up. What happens is all the things that you take for granted like walking, swallowing and weeing, you have to relearn how to do because the neurological links that remain from when you were young get broken.

“Initially he found it interesting to learn how to deal with different aspects of it and learn tricks to get around it, but by the end there wasn’t any point. The thing that went through his mind would have been ‘I’ve got to do this at some point and I’ve got to do it on my own, and I’ve got to make a call as to when.’

“You don’t want to do it too early as you want to eke out as much enjoyment as you can out of life, but you don’t want to leave it too late that you can’t do it without assistance. You don’t want to be in the position where you have to rely on someone to help you take your life because that could put them in trouble.

“In this situation he had to take control because there wasn’t any other option. He was always very clear in his mind about what was the right thing to do morally.” Professor Adey, whose expertise was in cognition and education, lived in Putney and had worked abroad including in Barbados, where he had produced a ground-breaking textbook called Sugar From Cane.