Dr Martin Vernon is a Consultant Geriatrician at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust.  He is Divisional Director of the Trust's Division of Medicine and Chair of the South Manchester Clinical Ethics Committee which he helped to establish.  He is currently Chair of the British Geriatrics Society Special Interest Group on Medical Ethics.  He has an MA in Medical Ethics and Law from Kings College London and teaches widely on the subject at postgraduate level.  Martin has contributed chapters to Medical Ethics and the Elderly (Radcliffe,2004) and is co‑author of Questions and Answers in Medical Ethics (Pastest, 2006).