Edward Downes "serious health problems" suffered by the couple. A statement issued by the couple's children said that while Downes could have gone on living with his deafness and blindness, he did not want to do so after his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In March 2010, Keir Starmer (director of public prosecutions) stated that Caractacus Downes would not be prosecuted for his involvement with his parents' assisted suicide because it was not in the public interest. Edward Downes Sir Edward Thomas ("Ted") Downes, CBE (17 June 1924 – 10 July 2009) was an English conductor, specialising in opera. He was
Peter Downes Peter Downes Sir Charles Peter Downes (born 15 October 1953) is a British biochemist and the current Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dundee. He is the former Head of the College of Life Sciences and co-founder of the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) alongside Sir Phillip Cohen. Having contributed to research in the pharmaceutical industry for eleven years prior to joining Dundee, he is one of the top 15 most cited bio-scientists in the UK. As a pioneering biochemist, Downes was instrumental in establishing the biological importance of the inositol glycerophospholipids and their metabolites. Among his other