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Look Into It - Euthanasia (The Case For Killing Granny)
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The Case For Killing
Granny
"Do you still think there's no eugenics agenda?..."
The Health Ranger discusses the new TIME Magazine issue entitled, "How to Die!" which promotes
death panels, killing the elderly to save money (and earn bonuses!), and even yanking feeding tubes out of the
mouths of your own dying parents!
Disgusting eugenics agenda from the dying dinosaur media...
PUBLISHED: 18:08 EST, 19 June
2012|UPDATED: 09:14 EST, 20 June
2012
Worrying claim: Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a
controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly
NHS doctors are prematurely ending
the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a
senior consultant claimed yesterday.
Professor Patrick Pullicino said
doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the
elderly.
He claimed there was often a lack of
clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is
used in hospitals across the country.
It is designed to come into force
when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.
It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of
water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
There are around 450,000 deaths in
Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients
who were on the LCP.
Professor Pullicino claimed that far
too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death
pathway rather than a care pathway’.
He cited ‘pressure on beds and
difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.
Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a
patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated.
He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are
‘palpably false’.
In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital
suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend
shift.
Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to
find the patient unresponsive and his family upset because they had not agreed to place him on the
LCP.
‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant
resistance,’ he said.
‘His seizures came under control
and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family,’ he said.
Professor Pullicino, a consultant
neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, was
speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine in London.
Distressing: The professor has claimed an approved
technique of looking after the terminally ill is not being used in all hospitals
He said: ‘The lack of evidence
for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care
pathway.
‘Very likely many elderly
patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP.
‘Patients are frequently put on
the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition.
‘Predicting death in a time frame
of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible
scientifically.
This determination in the LCP
leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal views of the physician or other medical team members of
perceived quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in putting a patient on the
LCP.’
He added: ‘If we accept the
Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that euthanasia is part of the standard way of dying as it is now associated
with 29 per cent of NHS deaths.’
The LCP was developed in the
North West during the 1990s and recommended to hospitals by the National Institute for Health and Clinical
Excellence in 2004.
Medical criticisms of the
Liverpool Care Pathway were voiced nearly three years ago.
Experts including Peter Millard,
emeritus professor of geriatrics at the University of London, and Dr Peter Hargreaves, palliative care
consultant at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, Surrey, warned of ‘backdoor euthanasia’ and the risk that
economic factors were being brought into the treatment of vulnerable patients.
In the example of the
71-year-old, Professor Pullicino revealed he had given the patient another 14 months of life by demanding the
man be removed from the LCP.
Professor Pullicino said the
patient was an Italian who spoke poor English, but was living with a ‘supportive wife and daughter’. He had a
history of cerebral haemorrhage and subsequent seizures.
Professor Pullicino said: ‘I
found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday morning and was told he had been put on the LCP. He was on morphine
via a syringe driver.’ He added: ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant
resistance.’
The patient’s extra 14 months of life came at considerable cost to
the NHS and the taxpayer, Professor Pullicino indicated.
He said he needed extensive
support with wheelchair, ramps and nursing.
After 14 months the patient was
admitted to a different hospital with pneumonia and put on the LCP. The man died five hours
later.
A Department of Health spokesman
said: ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway is not euthanasia and we do not recognise these figures. The pathway is
recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians – at home and abroad – including the Royal
College of Physicians.
‘A patient’s condition is monitored at least every four hours and,
if a patient improves, they are taken off the Liverpool Care Pathway and given whatever treatments best
suit their new needs.’
A fictional story, 'The Unproductive' is a provocative look at effects of the euthanasia debate
on a relationship: how it can divide and devastate, as well as create a sense of helplessness at having to make a
life or death decision. The story also touches upon the ever-increasing competition between independent and
established news media; that is, the conflict this causes between two cousins whose perceptions of reality are
shaped by quite different news media sources. 'The Unproductive' was somewhat influenced by the Terri (Schindler)
Schiavo saga, which occurred in 2005. http://theunproductivefilm.com/
