Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told.. [ Death by NHS]

Telegraph (UK) ^ | 01 Dec 2012 | Laura Donnelly

[Mrs. Don-o]

Each year around 130,000 patients are placed on the Lierpool Care Pathway, which can involve the withdrawal of drugs, fluids and food, and the administration of powerful pain relief. A national audit by the Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool and the Royal College of Physicians ... demonstrated that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.

It also reveals that thousands of dying patients have been left to suffer in pain, with no attempt to keep them comfortable while drugs were administered. just how routinely hospitals are placing patients on the pathway without informing them that steps which could hasten their death have been taken. The national audit found:

• In 44 per cent of cases when conscious patients were placed on the pathway, there was no record that the decision had been discussed with them.

• For 22 per cent of patients on the pathway, there was no evidence that comfort and safety had been maintained while medication was administered.

• One in three families of the dying never received a leaflet they should have been given to explain the process.

Critics of the pathway say it is being used to hasten the deaths of the terminally-ill and elderly, in a form of "back-door euthanasia".

Other doctors, nurses and charities for the dying have come to the defence of the approach...

[snip]

In a hard-hitting speech last week Mr Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary, expressed concern about the culture of the NHS, warning that too many patients were forced to experience "coldness, resentment, indifference" and "even contempt".

He warned that in the worst institutions a "normalisation of cruelty" had been fostered.

[43north]

My living will states that I want my brain transplanted into the body of a young stud with a hot wife...

[GeronL]

and if you get the hot wife instead?

/sarc

[Mrs. Don-o]

This advocacy of "killing children" is the philosophy of the SS-Totenkopfverbände and the Madrassa. That way leads, not to the legitimate defense of the famly and the nation, but to eternal horror.

"Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."