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When I was a teenager I was extremely lucky, landing in the middle of a cultural and social revolution. Driving into assembly on the back of a motorbike, having a fling with an unsuspecting English teacher and being desperate to get myself laid at 15 gave me immediate membership to the only club worth joining - the club that was 'the 60s'. Apart from occasional doses of teenage angst, I was what you might call very, ‘alive and kicking’; anything I could kick against, I did. And therein lays the problem - the one about being alive. Consider the figures...

If you want to see where our culture may next go off the rails, read professional journals. There, in often eye-crossing and passive arcane prose of the medical intelligentsia, you will discover an astonishing level of antipathy to the sanctity of human life — to the point now that some advocate killing the profoundly disabled for their organs.Case in point: “What Makes Killing Wrong?” an article published in the January 19, 2012 edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics. The authors argue that death and total disability are morally indistinguishable, and therefore harvesting organs from living disabled patients is not...

February 8, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The conundrum faced by the organ transplant industry, that the removal of vital organs kills the “donor,” can be “easily obviated by abandoning the norm against killing,” two leading U.S. bioethicists have said. In an article titled, “What Makes Killing Wrong?” appearing in last month’s Journal of Medical Ethics, the authors have moved the argument forward by admitting that the practice of vital organ donation ignores “traditional” medical ethics. “Traditional medical ethics embraces the norm that doctors … must not kill their patients. This norm is often seen as absolute and universal. In contrast, we...

February 8, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The conundrum faced by the organ transplant industry, that the removal of vital organs kills the “donor,” can be “easily obviated by abandoning the norm against killing,” two leading U.S. bioethicists have said. In an article titled, “What Makes Killing Wrong?” appearing in last month’s Journal of Medical Ethics, the authors have moved the argument forward by admitting that the practice of vital organ donation ignores “traditional” medical ethics. “Traditional medical ethics embraces the norm that doctors … must not kill their patients. This norm is often seen as absolute and universal. In contrast, we...

February 8, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Netherlands Right-to-Die Association (NVVE) has announced that it will soon fulfill a promise made last year to open a private euthanasia “clinic” that offers door-to-door service, for people who can’t convince their regular doctor to kill them. According to reports in the Spanish and Portuguese-language press, the clinic will serve clients who wish to end their lives, but have been refused help from doctors for “ethical” reasons. A report by Radio Netherlands says that the organization has mentioned patients who are “in the early stages of dementia and those suffering from chronic psychiatric problems.”...

The world’s first euthanasia film festival is being held in Amsterdam, sponsored by the Dutch Right to Die lobby (NVVE). This week, from February 6 to 12 is a "Week of Euthanasia" in the Netherlands, a celebration of a decade of euthanasia and assisted suicide. They were legalised on April 1, 2002. More than 35 old and new films and documentaries, from all over the world, from Hollywood to Bollywood are to be screened. They include Million Dollar Baby, Mar Adentro, The Barabarian Invasions, Las Buenas Hierbas, Igby goes down, Whose Life is it Anyway? and The Suicide Tourist. There...

“Passive eugenicide allowed babies deemed “defective” to starve, or be denied medical attention.” The “Unfit” defined: Eugenics as an instrument of race improvement was inspired by animal husbandry that improved livestock through selective breeding, and culling undesirables from breeding stock. Eugenics sought to apply the principle to human breeding. Eugenics “ideal” for America’s racial stock was the Nordic blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan. The “unfit” included the “feeble minded,” homosexuals; persons evidencing criminal traits, alcoholism, blindness, deafness, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and a wide range of “mental illnesses.” To eugenicists even “laziness” was understood as a genetic trait to be eliminated from the...

  Disrespect for the Disabled + ObamaCare = ? David C. Stolinsky Feb. 2, 2012 Recently the Los Angeles Times devoted two entire columns to the misuse of disabled parking placards by people who appear not to be disabled. This makes the few spots reserved for the disabled even less available, a real problem. But the author’s chief complaint was the fact that the placards allow drivers to park at meters without paying or obeying time limits − thus depriving the city of money. Like a typical leftist, he saw the problem as economic. The author seemed to condemn...

BERLIN, January 27, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Berlin’s “Topography of Terror,” museum, which features exhibits on the murderous crimes of German police forces during the Nazi era, has begun a temporary display on the thousands of children euthanized during the same period as “life unworthy of life.” The exhibition, entitled “In memory of the children. Pediatricians and crimes against children in the Nazi period,” displays photos and documents related to various Nazi projects concerning the murder and torture of children, such as Action T4 and Lebensborn. While Action T4 focused on exterminating children who were physically or mentally handicapped, Lebensborn...

An 80 percent abortion rate of those with disabilities shows the need to restore a fundamental respect for human dignity in America, said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia. He underscored that the plight of disabled babies highlights “a struggle within the American soul” that will shape the future of the nation. “These children with disabilities are not a burden; they’re a priceless gift to all of us,” the archbishop said. “They’re a doorway to the real meaning of our humanity.” Archbishop Chaput delivered the keynote address at the 13th annual Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life on Jan. 22. The...

Remember the Avis Rent-a-Car commercials from the 1960s? Maybe not. Anyhow, they tripled the company’s market share with the slogan, “Avis Is Only No. 2, We Try Harder.” The Belgian right-to-die lobby seems to have the same can-do attitude. In the journal Health Policy, researchers associated with the End-of-Life Care Research Group at Ghent University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels have lamented the low take-up of the services of doctors specialising in facilitating euthanasia. A group called the Life End Information Forum (LEIF) was formed in 2002 in Belgium as soon as euthanasia was legalised. Since the new law required...

An experienced doctor who works with terminal patients has asked whether assisted suicide is just a cost-saving exercise. Dr Elizabeth A Burroughs, in a letter to a national newspaper, said: “Quality palliative care costs money; assisted suicide is a cheaper option. But how long would it be before pressure was being placed on the terminally ill to ‘do the decent thing’?” Dr Burroughs also commented: “In 30 years as a GP, I was asked by at most a handful of terminally ill patients to hasten their deaths." Care “In 17 years working in hospices I cannot recall ever having received...

Four patients are dying hungry and thirsty on hospital wards every day, shocking figures reveal. Dehydration or malnutrition directly caused or was linked to 1,316 deaths last year in NHS trusts and privately run hospitals. The revelation follows a series of damning reports accusing staff of failing to address the most basic needs of the vulnerable, particularly the elderly. Only this month David Cameron was forced to order nurses to carry out hourly spot checks of patients just to see whether they need help eating, drinking or going to the toilet.

Egbert, a slightly built, genial and energetic retired anesthesiologist with a snowy goatee, turns to his computer, his back to me, content to answer an e-mail while I sort through the pile. Once I finish untangling, I hold in my hands a curious plastic sack, about 21 inches long and 18 inches wide. A bunched white elastic strip, reminiscent of a garter, circles the mouth at the open end. A thick plastic tube runs into the sack, stretching 37 inches before branching into a T-shape with 12-inch arms extending from each side of the joint. Egbert calls it an “exit...

Brother testifies in favor of “Terri Schiavo Day” by Matt Lacy – Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo testified on Tuesday in support of a New Hampshire bill proclaiming March 31 of each year as a day to remember Terri Schiavo. Schiavo, who spent 15 years on a feeding tube, became a focal point over the right to die issue and highlighted the need for individuals to have a living will specifying their wishes.. On February 25, 1990 Schiavo collapsed while at home. After being admitted to the hospital, doctors were unable to determine an exact cause of...

Michael Nazir-Ali is Director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy & Dialogue, and was formerly the Bishop of Rochester. Time and again, Parliament has refused to relax the law on assisted suicide.  Having failed there, attempts were made to get around the law by persuading the Director of Public Prosecution to revise guidelines about who might be prosecuted for helping a relative or a friend to end their life.  A relentless campaign has been kept up in the media inspite of the thinness of the medical, legal and moral arguments which are regularly brought up in support...

This time, the proponents of assisted suicide think they've got it right. Trapped in the nebulous area of trying to establish criteria for when assisted suicide should be allowed, without danger of being accused of sliding down that proverbial slippery slope, British advocates have come up with a proposal.They seem to think that this time, it's foolproof. It isn't.The U.K.'s Commission on Assisted Dying released a report of 400 pages this past week, authored by lawyers, doctors and an ex-police commissioner, which would allow for assisted suicide in people 18 or older, who are mentally competent and have a maximum...

TORONTO, Ontario, January 6, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Starting Friday, Canada’s largest national pro-life organization will send a powerful warning to households across the country about what could happen if the courts acquiesce to recent pleas for the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Campaign Life Coalition has launched a month-long national media campaign with 60-second TV ads running on the Sun News Network from Jan. 6-29.  It is expected to reach over 3.2 million viewers. Mary Ellen Douglas, CLC’s national organizer, said the campaign comes at a crucial time as there has been a renewed push to legalize euthanasia in...

Euthanasia is once again in the spotlight. The Carter case, now before the courts in B.C., seeks to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada. It’s a constitutional challenge which seeks to legalize these practices as medical treatment and to be regulated within provincial health-care regulations.On April 21, 2010, Canada’s parliament soundly defeated Bill C-384, which sought to amend the Criminal Code, allowing the right to die with dignity. It was a bad piece of legislation which, had it passed, would have directly threatened the lives of persons with disabilities.We won this battle. However, Canada’s right-to-die lobby aren’t giving up...

Helping the terminally ill to end their lives should be made legal, a report is expected to recommend this week. The Independent Commission on Assisted Dying is set to call for it to be legalised for a limited category of people with fatal diseases, and to be strictly monitored. The commission, chaired by the former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, is expected to criticise the legal framework which means that relatives face prosecution and even imprisonment for helping loved ones to commit suicide. It will suggest that those who encourage or assist another to die should no longer be threatened with...

Dr. Alexander K. Smith is a brave man.It has taken physicians a very long time to accept the need to level with patients and their families when they have terminal illnesses and death is near — and we know that many times those kinds of honest, exploratory conversations still don’t take place.Now Dr. Smith, a palliative care specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, who also practices at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and two co-authors are urging another change, one they acknowledge would “radically alter” the way health care professionals communicate with their very old patients.In...

Detroit — Seven years ago, Bobby Schindler’s life changed as he watched his sister fight for hers. Terri Schiavo had suffered severe brain damage several years earlier after entering cardiac arrest in her St. Petersburg, Fla., home, but that wasn’t what was threatening to take her life. According to her brother, the hospitals, courts, state and Schiavo’s husband posed a far greater risk. And on March 18, 2005, Schindler and his parents could only watch helplessly and desperately as Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, on which she depended for sustenance, was removed. Thirteen days later, she died a slow death of...

AFTER A FALL at his Florida retirement home, Lester Angell was robbed of any mobility not already lost to metastatic prostate cancer. An impending hospital admission promised to steal what little autonomy the 81-year-old had left. As the last act of an independent but terminally ill man, Angell took control of the time and circumstances of his death by reaching into his nightstand and pulling out a pistol. “No one should have to die alone that way,” says his daughter, Dr. Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School. Fourteen years after she wrote about his...

The most common problem was "too much care," followed by the sense that other patients would have benefited more from intensive care, according to Dr. Ruth Piers of Ghent University Hospital in Belgium and colleagues. The researchers note in the Journal of the American Medical Association that other studies have found ICU physicians often feel they are treating patients whose chances of survival are slim to nothing. While it's unclear if the new findings apply in the U.S., one recent survey showed nearly half of American primary care physicians believe their patients are getting too much medical care (see Reuters...

Euthanasia is not just a lethal act, but a deadly ideological appetite–one that is never satiated.  Once killing is unleashed as a solution to suffering, activists will always want more.  Always.  As I have written before, they remind me of the man killing plant in Little Shop of Horrors, growing ever larger and constantly yelling, “Feed me!” Latest of so many cases in point: Belgian activists have a petition out to open euthanasia to minors and to force all doctors to be complicit in killing by creating a duty to refer to a death doctor if they are not willing to...

Terri Schiavo of Florida, who's vegetative state and right to life became a national issue in 2005 The difference between a dead man and a man in a vegetative state used to be a thin line of whether or not the body was still functioning. But what if the vegetative man is still conscious? That brings the distinction into a whole new level.Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong gave a talk titled “Is he conscious? Does he want to be?” at the Trent Center for Bioethics on Friday, Dec. 9. He discussed clinical studies which have shown that despite the unresponsive display, patients...

The perils of the social devaluation of people include legal assisted suicide and euthanasia It is not uncommon to hear people without disabilities and people who have recently acquired a disability say they would rather be dead than disabled. Although politically incorrect, embedded perceptions that life with disability is full of suffering and indignity promote the idea that it's a death sentence. Able-ist social conditioning equates disability with pain, frailty, incapacity, and poor quality of life. It views persons with disabilities as problems that need to be fixed. The 'problem' of disability I would argue the "problem" of disability...

In his encyclical entitled Evangelicum Vitae, Pope John Paul II states, “choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable. Even certain sectors of the medical profession, which by its calling is directed to the defense and care of human life, are increasingly willing to carry out these acts against the person.” As physicians, we took an oath to strive, to the best of our abilities, to help patients and to make every reasonable effort to do no harm. Physician-assisted suicide is incompatible with that goal, and is the means to an...

The “slippery slope” is often derided as a logical fallacy. But when one of the leading advocacy groups for euthanasia in Belgium posts an article entitled “Euthanasie: tijd voor de volgende stap, Euthanasia, time for the next step”, it’s hard not to think that it may not be so illogical after all. The Humanistisch-Vrijzinnige Vereniging (Humanist-Liberal Association) complains that eligibility for euthanasia is far too restrictive. At the moment, only people with unbearable suffering can be euthanased. This leaves out people in irreversible comas, people with dementia, people with irreversible brain diseases and people who are under 18. This is...

Imagine a Canada where doctors could prescribe death to depressed teenagers, shadowing the online predator who coached 18-year-old Nadia Kajouji to drown herself in the frozen Rideau Canal three years ago. A Royal Society of Canada expert panel would see such a nightmare become reality, urging in a landmark report that government should legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for all “competent” adults who want to end their lives, regardless of whether they actually have a terminal illness.But before Canadians consider making assisted death a “choice,” shouldn’t we first address the untreated physical, emotional and existential suffering that’s making it an...

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as...

Thousands of patients in the NHS are put onto the Liverpool Care Pathway each year in their last days and hours. It aims to give patients a 'good death' by avoiding unnecessary and burdensome medical intervention but there have been accusations it hastens death because it can involve the removal of artifical hydration and nutrition. A report into palliative care in the NHS found that in one, unnamed hospital trust, half of families were not told that their loved one had been placed on the LCP and in a quarter of trusts, one in three families were not informed. Dr...

Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are being placed on a "death pathway"

AMSTERDAM, December 1, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Dutch euthanasia advocacy group, “The Right To Die� (NVVE), is proposing a plan where “mobile teams of doctors and nurses … can help people to die in their own homes,� according to DutchNews.nl. On November 30 health minister Edith Schippers told MPs that the proposal earlier this month by NVVE spokeswoman Walburg de Jong to create the mobile units “for patients who meet the criteria for euthanasia but whose doctors are unwilling to carry it out,� is worthy of consideration. “If the patients thinks it desirable, the doctor can refer him or her...

It’s been a sickly couple of weeks for life. This past Monday, a B.C. Supreme Court case kicked off in which five people are seeking the right to choose to be killed by a physician. The very next day, the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) released a report that urges the federal government to legalize assisted suicide in Canada. A summary of the End of Life Decision Making report states: “The evidence from years of experience and research where euthanasia and/or assisted suicide are permitted does not support claims that decriminalization will result in vulnerable persons being subjected to abuse...

Decriminalization of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia is an unethical alternative to redressing current deficiencies in palliative care in Canada, physicians, ethicists and patient advocates argue. Decriminalization would offer a false choice so long as Canadians lack access to palliative care, the critics contended while panning the recommendation of the Royal Society of Canada panel report, End-of-Life Decision Making, which called for sweeping reforms to the Criminal Code on the grounds that there is no ethical distinction between assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia, and withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from competent adults (www.rsc-src.ca/documents/RSCEndofLifeReport2011_EN_Formatted_FINAL.pdf). The critics assert that it is “naive”...

The Nathaniel Centre - The New Zealand Catholic Bioethics Centre - is appalled at suggestions that legalising euthanasia could be a solution to the increasing number of suicides amongst elderly New Zealanders. Director, John Kleinsman, says that people suffering from depression need extra care and support, not encouragement to die. "The old and the sick can too easily be persuaded, often in subtle ways, that their lives are not worth living. If people are suffering depression, they need help with that - they need support, care and counselling not a license to kill themselves or be killed at the hands...

With the release of an important new report, and the launch of another Charter challenge, the debate about euthanasia is flaring up again. It will be passionate. You will hear emotional claims from both sides. Many people will listen to nothing else. But for those who want to be rational, those who want to learn as much as they can and draw a conclusion based on evidence, there is one essential fact to bear in mind.The Dutch are more honest than we are. Remember that.If you’ve read anything about euthanasia, pro or con, chances are you have seen references to...

Well, that didn’t take long.  The Olympian has editorialized in favor of the assisted suicide law to allow “euthanasia” beyond assisted suicide for the terminally ill. From a column by a member of the Olympian Board of Contributors: To improve the chances of passage, the Death with Dignity Act was written to  apply only to the choices of the terminally ill who are competent at the time of  their death. This raises the question whether, if the act continues to work as intended,  we should extend the choice of voluntary euthanasia to: • Persons who are not terminally ill but suffering...

The Dutch voluntary euthanasia society is proposing to set up teams of doctors and nurses who can help people to die in their own homes, the AD reports on Wednesday. The idea of the teams stems from the society's wish to set up a special clinic where people can come to die, which the NVVE announced in January. 'Most people want to die at home,' an NVVE spokesman told the paper. The clinic is still on the cards, but will only have a couple of beds for people who cannot die at home, the spokesman said. The NVVE says only...

Late last night the prestigious British medical journal “The Lancet” published a very important study online that further demonstrated that patients diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state have either often been misdiagnosed or are sometimes consciously aware even if they are in a PVS. Several of you wrote back in response to our analysis (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/11/lancet-study-provides-more-evidence-that-patients-in-so-called-%E2%80%9Cpersistent-vegetative-state%E2%80%9D-may-be-consciously-aware) which is one important reason for this follow-up. I spent about an hour and a half today reading how media outlets covered the conclusions drawn by “Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state: a cohort study.” The New York Times’ two lead paragraphs are absolutely...

Reports coming out of the Netherlands add to mounting evidence that physician-assisted suicide, over time, leads to the nonvoluntary euthanizing of patients—patients who neither requested nor authorized their deaths. (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/11/what%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cchoice%e2%80%9d-got-to-do-with-dutch-euthanasia; www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/10/applauding-suicide-for-the-mentally-ill) In a recent article appearing in the British publication the Daily Mail, there was a well documented case where the once highly touted “safeguard”–that only competent people currently asking for death will be killed–was willfully abandoned.  A 64-year-old woman with severe dementia who was euthanized in the Netherlands–even though she was no longer competent. The article [www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059444/Senile-64-year-old-Dutch-woman-euthanised-longer-able-express-wish-die.html?ito=feeds-newsxml] reported,“The unnamed woman was a long-term supporter of the controversial practice and had made a written...

Signs of consciousness have been detected in three people previously thought to be in a vegetative state, with the help of a cheap, portable device that can be used at the bedside. "There's a man here who technically meets all the internationally agreed criteria for being in a vegetative state, yet he can generate 200 responses [to direct commands] with his brain," says Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario. "Clearly this guy is not in a true vegetative state. He's probably as conscious as you or I are." In 2005, Owen's team, used functional MRI to show consciousness...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, November 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When a 64-year-old Dutch woman with dementia was killed in March, she was the first to be euthanized without the ability to consent, Dutch media reported Wednesday. But anti-euthanasia activists are contesting the claim, saying Dutch patients have been killed without their consent for years. The woman, a long-time euthanasia advocate, had progressed in her illness to the point where she lacked the ability to consent, but a committee of doctors approved the euthanasia nevertheless. She left a note expressing her wish to be euthanized, and her husband and children supported her decision....

FREDERICK, Md. — A judge in Maryland must decide if a man who suffered severe brain damage after a heart attack should continue getting sustenance through a feeding tube at his mother’s and brother’s behest, contrary to his wife’s instructions. A Frederick County Circuit Court judge will hear arguments Wednesday in the case involving Daniel Sanger, 55, of Rohrersville. The unemployed computer technician lost much of his speaking ability and mobility after a heart attack in July, according to his brother Mark Sanger, a Eugene, Ore., businessman.

I spoke at a town-hall event about end-of-life care recently that, unfortunately, devolved mostly into an intense debate on assisted suicide. When the time came for audience questions, a self-described “mentally ill� woman took the microphone and strongly declared that she too should have the right to doctor-prescribed death. More than half the audience applauded, validating the woman’s potential suicide.Ten years ago, supporting suicide for the mentally ill would have been unthinkable, even among hardcore Hemlock Society types. Now, alas, giving approval — or shrugging indifferently — to all manner of suicidal desires is becoming increasingly common. Indeed, you...

UTRECHT, Netherlands, October 24, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) has released new guidelines for interpreting the 2002 Euthanasia Act that now includes “mental and psychosocial ailments” such as “loss of function, loneliness and loss of autonomy” as acceptable criteria for euthanasia. The guidelines also allow doctors to connect a patient’s lack of “social skills, financial resources and a social network” to “unbearable and lasting suffering,” opening the door to legal assisted death based on “psychosocial” factors, not terminal illness. The June 2011 position paper, titled “The Role of the Physician in the Voluntary Termination of Life”...

FREDERICK, Md. — A 55-year-old Maryland man who became temporarily unconscious after suffering a heart attack and a seizure has been saved from being starved to death after an ADF-allied attorney obtained an order in state court on behalf of the man’s mother and brother. The man, Daniel Sanger, is now responding to hospital staff after going six days without food and water. Although Sanger told his doctor and his mother “I want to live” before he went unconscious, Frederick Memorial Hospital removed the public-assistance patient from life-giving food, water, and nutrients on Friday with the permission of his wife....

Is there such a thing as a “duty to die?” Some notable voices in bioethics say, yes. They believe that as a matter of distributive justice, when people reach a certain advanced age, severe disability, or very poor health, they owe it to society, their families—and even themselves—to allow life to (or make it) end. Thus, in 1997, University of Tennessee bioethics professor, John Hardwig, wrote in the prestigious Hastings Center Report, “A duty to die is more likely when continuing to live will impose significant burdens—emotional burdens, extensive caregiving, destruction of life plans, and yes, financial hardship—on your family...

Elderly patients are being condemned to an early death by hospitals making secret use of "do not resuscitate" orders, an investigation has found. The orders – which record an advance decision that a patient's life should not be saved if their heart stops – are routinely being applied without the knowledge of the patient or their relatives. On one ward, one-third of DNR orders were issued without consultation with the patient or their family, according to the NHS's own records. At another hospital, junior doctors freely admitted that the forms were filled out by medical teams without the involvement of...