A CANCER expert told the inquests of three men whose GP was cleared of murdering them that morphine he gave two of them shortly before they died may have been appropriate.

Professor Karol Sikora was giving evidence at a hearing into the deaths of FrankMoss, Harry Gittins and Stanley Weldon.

Dr Howard Martin was cleared of murdering all three men with drugs overdoses, while practising in south Durham, after a trial in December 2005.

Earlier in the hearing, which could last until mid March, Coroner Andrew Tweddle was told some experts considered the doses Dr Martin administered were high and likely to have hastened the men's deaths.

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But yesterday, Prof Sikora said a treating clinician must make a judgement when faced with a suffering patient and that "it is difficult to make a retrospective judgement".

Prof Sikora said Mr Moss, 59, of Eldon, near Bishop Auckland, was probably in the terminal phase of advanced lung cancer throughout the month of his death, March 2003.

"I suspect when Dr Martin went round, he felt he had to do something there and then because of the severity of Mr Moss's symptoms, " he said.

He said that morphine is "one of the oldest and best" drugs for pain relief and felt doses injected by Dr Martin were reasonable for someone as ill as Mr Moss in severe pain and breathlessness.

John Beggs, representing Dr Martin, put to Prof Sikora:

"Seeing patients die painful deaths must put pressure on clinicians who might err on the side of preventing pain."

He replied: "I would links of london charms certainly say that a doctor wants to do everything to prevent pain."

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MrGittins, 74, of Newton Aycliffe, had throat cancer which the professor, a World Health Organisation advisor, said would be very painful, even without spreading to other organs.

Prof Sikora said large doses of morphine and diamorphine injected into Mr Gittins' muscle seemed reasonable.

When asked why that was his view by Mr Tweddle, he said: "On the background of severe pain that was not controlled by oral morphine he'd been taking."

Following questioning by Oliver Longstaff, representing the Moss and Gittins families, the professor agreed Dr Martin had given large doses.

He said he would have recommended Mr Gittins went to hospital but that a doctor cannot make a patient do something they don't want to.

The hearing continues.

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