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End of Life Care and Ending-Life Care?

News Items | Submitted on 17/07/2008

ALERT Comment

The Liverpool Care Pathway must be amended. If it is not there will be an open scandal.

The Department of Health ought not to be seen as imposing a Final Solution to the problem of old age and infirmity.

NHS offers more help to die with dignity at home

By Steve Doughty, Daily Mail
16th July 2008

Selecting for death

News Items | Submitted on 07/07/2008

From New Directions, July 2008.

Elspeth Chowdharay-Best on the next stage in the battle for life involving new hospital procedures for ensuring a speedy death

When utilitarian values take over from Judeo-Christian tradition, the weakest go to the wall. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill demonstrates the official contempt for human beings too young to defend themselves.

Another danger to helpless people in hospitals, nursing homes and care homes is the government’s new End of Life Care Programme. It is linked to the ‘Liverpool Care Pathway’, which bears some resemblance to the method of euthanasia which is becoming popular in the Netherlands: deep sedation without hydration, so that the patient dies for lack of water. Controversy in the British Medical Journal centres round the Pathway’s usefulness to patients. It is undoubtedly useful to the Department of Health’s budget.

NHS Meltdown: Elderly Woman Starved Rather Than Cared for to Save Money?

News Items | Submitted on 07/07/2008

By Wesley J. Smith

I have heard rumors of stories like this from my contacts in the UK, but have not posted on it because that is what they were: Rumors. But now, the BBC has reported that a care facility might have tried to starve an elderly woman to save money. From the story:

Britain's Pathway to Euthanasia - NHS Protocols for Dehydrating Disabled Patients to Death

News Items | Submitted on 04/07/2008

By Hilary White

July 3, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A British "end of life" care protocol approved for use by the National Health Service (NHS), has created a systematic, and legal, method of euthanising elderly and disabled patients, even while "mercy killing" remains officially illegal, says a prominent expert in elder care. The "Liverpool Care Pathway" will be used to eliminate patients deemed to be "blocking beds" in the increasingly financially strapped public health system.

For years, Dr. Adrian Treloar, a psycho-geriatrician and senior lecturer at the Greenwich Hospital and Guys', King's and St. Thomas's Hospitals in London, has been sounding the warning that the NHS has an unofficial system in place to authorise the killing of vulnerable disabled patients with an unwritten policy of "involuntary euthanasia" by deep sedation and dehydration.

Mother Fights to Save Daughter's Life

News Items | Submitted on 03/07/2008

Mother launches 'right-to-life' legal battle against hospital to save six-year-old daughter

Story from Telegraph News, by Richard Savill

1 July, 2008

The mother of a terminally ill six-year-old girl is to launch a "right-to-life" legal battle against a hospital after doctors said they would refuse to give her daughter life-saving treatment.

Lesley Hartland, whose daughter Amber has a rare brain disorder and needs intensive care treatment when she has chest infections, has vowed to contest the action "with every breath in my body."

Elderly Woman Rescued by Family from NHS Dehydration Order

News Items | Submitted on 03/07/2008

From LifeSiteNews.com

By Hilary White

Deemed "due to die" by doctors in February, Ellen Westwood is now home and recovering.

BIRMINGHAM, UK, July 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - "Ellen Westwood was due to die in February but her family's Catholic and for them, life is sacred." So begins the television coverage by the BBC of a battle by a Birmingham family to prevent the NHS from dehydrating their mother to death.

According to the BBC's report, doctors decided on a Friday in February that Mrs. Westwood was "due to die" by the following Monday, but the family, with the intervention of their priest, fought the order to remove the woman's hydration.

Good: Delaware Didn't "Learn the Lesson" of Schiavo

News Items | Submitted on 01/07/2008

By Wesley J. Smith

The Delaware House of Representatives has passed a resolution in support of protecting the life of Loren Richardson, who like Terri Schiavo before her, is the subject of a bitter court fight over removing her feeding tube. The resolution states:

Australian "Euthanasia" Manslaughter Convictions

News Items | Submitted on 24/06/2008

From Wesley J. Smith, 19 June 2008.

Good news and bad news. An Australian jury has convicted two women who killed an Alzheimer's patient. From the story:

The Sydney jury found Shirley Justins guilty of manslaughter and Caren Jenning guilty of being an accessary to manslaughter for the euthanasia drug death of former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie...Justins pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting suicide early in the trial, and said Wylie was desperate to die before his dementia got worse. Jenning also told the jury she was motivated by mercy in travelling to Mexico to obtain the Nembutal for Wylie, who was one of her oldest friends.

Normally, such a defense melts hearts and juries--caught up in the "quality of life" ethos of our age--often will not convict. And that brings us to the bad news:

Pressuring Media to be Assisted Suicide Propagandists

News Items | Submitted on 24/06/2008

From Wesley J. Smith, 13 June 2008

Assisted suicide advocates pushing Washington's I 1000 are resorting to coercion to pressure the media into using their advocacy phrases when describing the pro-assisted suicide initiative. From the Eye on Olympia blog :

Cancer Patient Commits Suicide When Told NHS Will Not Cover Chemo

News Items | Submitted on 23/06/2008

From Wesley J. Smith

This is a crucial issue involving the assisted suicide debate. We have already seen in Oregon a woman denied coverage for chemotherapy to extend her life, but told that Medicaid will pay for her assisted suicide. Now, that scenario played out in the UK. The melting down NHS denied a chemotherapy treatment and the man, in despair, killed himself. From the story:

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