In my earlier post by the same name, we discussed how Bimbo Palin trumped Barack the Brilliant in the public option debate when she dubbed ObamaCare’s treatment effectiveness panels as “death panels”. She was widely attacked for misrepresenting the US equivalent of the British NICE. And that wasn’t very nice (pun intended).
But now it appears that death as policy is gaining ground under the British National Health Service. From today’s UK Telegraph under the headline, “Sentenced to Death on the NHS”:
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.
As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.
“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.
“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”
It seems that a particular end-of-life protocol created by the Marie Curie charity has been adopted nationwide and is leading to a system where physicians have a bias toward death.
Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.
He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.
He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.
Read it all. This is what happens when snuffing people becomes a “pathway”.
Ed Morrissey weighs in.
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