Posted on 09/15/2009 3:46:09 PM PDT by wagglebee
September 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to a new report, more than a quarter of U.K. families are not told when their loved ones are taken off of life support, reports the Daily Mail. Researchers from the Royal College of Physicians and the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute in Liverpool conducted an audit of 4,000 patients put on the Liverpool Care Pathway, the end-of-life care plan that has brought 'slow' euthanasia into Britain through the back door.
The Pathway, approved by the National Health Service (NHS), allows doctors to deny "treatment," including food and water, to patients they deem incurable and put them in continuous deep sedation until they die. According to the Daily Mail, this protocol is used in 300 hospitals and 560 care homes across the country.
According to the report, 28 percent of the patients' relatives were not told that their loved one had been put on the pathway. In fact, doctors are not required by law to consult patients' families - Britain's 2005 Mental Capacity Act has given them the power to make decisions on behalf of patients who they deem mentally incapable without requiring them to heed the wishes of patients' families. Social services and police have even been called to intervene in certain cases where families attempt to save the lives of their loved ones.
Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at the University of London, confirmed other reports that the protocol is being used to kill patients that are not actually dying. "The risk as this is rolled out across the country is that elderly people with chronic conditions like Parkinson's or respiratory disorders may be dismissed as dying when they could still live for some time," he told the Daily Mail. "Discussions about the future of patients are being bypassed; the supportive nature of hospitals has gone. We are hearing complaints from all round the country.
"Governments have got rid of respite care and geriatric wards, so we're left with a crisis," he continued. "The Government has said let's develop a service to help people die at home - what they should be doing is helping them live. Only when death is unavoidable should you start withdrawing treatment."
"The problem is that there isn't enough discussion between doctors and patients and their relatives," he said. "Nobody is talking to them."
The average age of the 4,000 patients audited was 81. Thirty-nine per cent had cancer, and others had conditions such as dementia, stroke, pneumonia, organ failure, and dementia. Patients averaged 33 hours on the pathway before death.
The BBC reported last month that continuous deep sedation is increasingly being used by U.K. doctors to slowly euthanize their patients. The practice of continuous deep sedation is estimated to be associated with 16.5 percent of all deaths in the country.
While, according to Euthanasia Prevention Coalition executive director Alex Schadenberg, the practice of deep sedation can legitimately be used to alleviate pain in certain extreme cases, he also warns that it "can be a backdoor route to euthanasia if it is used unethically." Schadenberg told LifeSiteNews.com last month that "a good palliative care physician won't use the technique very often."
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
British Doctors Practising "Slow" Euthanasia through Deep Sedation: BBC Report
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/aug/09081803.html
Britain's Pathway to Euthanasia - NHS Protocols for Dehydrating Disabled Patients to Death
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070303.html
Elderly Woman Rescued by Family from NHS Dehydration Order
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070205.html
This is identical to what the left plans in America.
Pro-Life Ping
Please, let there be a special place in hell for these ‘doctors’ and ‘medical professionals’.
“Granny just died, sorry”
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This is exactly what they want
Thanks for the ping.
I have no doubt that there is.
What is exactly what who wants?
This is exactly what ObamaCare will become. This will empower government to decide who lives and dies. Ezekial Emmanuel smiles when he reads this story.
Well,at least Hussein would have given Granny a pain pill.
That’s what I thought you meant, I was just making sure.
To borrow someone’s quote from the Terri discussions, these people aren’t being denied services because they’re dying, but because they aren’t.
A current-day "progressive" like that touches himself when he reads something like this.As does Kevorkian.
Excellent point!
“Ignorance is bliss”...
one of the mantras of ObamaCare?
****************
Indeed.
This was easily predicted when Medicare was passed in 1965. It only covered those over 65. Naturally that is when we are nearing the end and things start to break down and medical costs go up. It was all a setup for this.
IIRC, when Medicare was being “sold” to us it was supposed to cover only the 20% of the bill that regular insurance didn’t. Total cost were low-balled as a result. That quickly changed into what we have today with run away costs. Now that is being used an an excuse to go even bigger.
SS was the same, a scam. It never was intended to be what was sold to the public. They take the taxes collected and pay what’s due and spend the rest. They have also added disability to SS that covers all ages for almost anything. The idea is to break the system.
A progressive income tax is also intended to control people through the incentives given or taken away.
All of these programs are a continuing move by the Democrats to eventually make us a Communist country with them ion total control.
Now they are trying to force through to final victory.
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