A DOCTOR accused of murdering three terminally ill patients administered drugs to his cancer-stricken son against his wife's wishes, a court was told yesterday.

Teesside Crown Court also heard how Dr Howard Martin spoke of giving drugs to other people whose families were unhappy, believing he had ended their loved ones' lives prematurely.

The daughter of 74-year-old cancer patient Harry Gittins told the jury how Dr Martin spoke to the family for two hours before administering the drugs which allegedly killed him in January last year.

Gillian Coates said: "He (Dr Martin) said his son had died of cancer and he had administered drugs to his son, and his wife hadn't been very happy about the way he had treated their son.

"He indicated he administered drugs to people when they weren't very well, that families hadn't always agreed because they felt he had taken the final days of those people's lives away and they hadn't had a chance to say they loved them."

The court was told that Mr Gittins was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in autumn 2003 then underwent two courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy which ended on January 16, last year.

Over the following week he had been ill and his wife of 45 years, Eileen, had called Dr Martin on January 21. The GP visited twice that day.

Mrs Coates said she and her brother, Paul, were at their parents' home in Woodham, near Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, while the doctor was there. She said Dr Martin told them her father's cancer had spread all over, but she questioned the prognosis and wanted to check with her father's hospital consultants.

She said the family was eventually convinced by Dr Martin that he should treat Mr Gittins at home with drugs.

She said: "He said 'the man's dying for God's sake', he was throwing his arms around as he was talking.

"I said in the end 'just give him the injection'."

Mrs Coates said the doctor then took a syringe from his bag, made it up with drugs and administered it to her father. Mr Gittins died early the next morning.

She was so concerned about the circumstances surrounding her father's death in the days after his funeral that she went to Newton Aycliffe police station and asked detectives to investigate.

Dr Martin, now of Gwynedd, North Wales, is also accused of the murder of Frank Moss, 59, of Eldon, near Bishop Auckland, on March 14, 2003, and Stanley Weldon, 74, of Coundon Grange, on March 18, 2003, with lethal injections. He denies all the charges.

The trial continues.