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In practice, however, the LCP has turned into something quite different.
For while in some cases it has been used properly as intended, with
numerous others it has become, instead, a backdoor form of euthanasia.
Precious
One of its ten key messages is that it neither hastens nor postpones
death. But, on the contrary, many examples have emerged where it has,
indeed, been used to hasten death.
Terminally ill patients have been heavily sedated and deprived of essential
nutrients and fluids in order to make them die more quickly.
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And there are claims that it is increasingly being applied without the
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knowledge of patients families, and when such patients still have a chance
of recovering for a few more precious weeks, months or even years of life.
One report last year found that as many as 2,500 families were not even
told that their relatives had been put on the LCP.
In other cases, relatives have suddenly discovered that a do not
resuscitate notice has been issued against the wishes of patient and
family.
One cancer patient who had
suffered a heart attack and been
put on the LCP had all his tubes
and drips removed, including
hydrating fluids, on the false
grounds that he was dying.
Once his horrified family realised
what was going on and took steps
to guard him in order to ensure he
was nourished and treated, he
recovered and lived for another
month.
Earlier this year, Patrick Pullicino, a
consultant neurologist and
professor of clinical neurosciences
at Kent University, told a
conference that the LCP had
become an assisted death
pathway for than 100,000 patients
each year.
Very likely, many elderly patients
who could live substantially longer
are being killed by the LCP, he
Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors
said.
had turned the use of a controversial
Suspicions
So how can this awful situation have been allowed to develop? How can
hospitals governed by the ethical imperative to first do no harm be killing
patients in their care? How can the NHS have been turned in these
circumstances into a National Death Service?
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Suffering
First, the word dying has been
applied to people suffering from
terminal illness or who are
considered by doctors or other
experts to have lives that are not
worth living, even when they are
not dying at all.
The second stage in this abuse of
language has been to re-label
actions designed to end the life of
someone who is not dying by
calling this helping them to die.
Such actions include the withdrawal
of food or water. But that is starving
or dehydrating someone to death.
And that is not helping them to die,
but killing them.
Yet that is precisely what has been
happening, ever since the courts
ruled in 1993 that the feeding tubes
could be removed from the
Hillsborough stadium disaster victim
Tony Bland, who was in a
persistent vegetative state,
because such artificial nutrition and
hydration were deemed to be
treatment.
The judges disingenuously claimed
then that this was not killing, but
allowing Tony Bland to die. But he
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With his case a fateful legal line was crossed. And so dying has become a
euphemism for killing.
The fundamental driver of all this is the belief that certain people are
better off dead because their lives are deemed worthless, a drain on the
public purse, or both.
The Liverpool Killing Pathway is driven not just by crude economic
calculation but by a wider brutalisation of our culture, at the heart of which
lies the erosion of respect for the innate value of human life.
And that way lies not just the degradation of the NHS, but a society devoid
of humanity itself.
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When my mother was in hospital with cancer, she had very good
care, and when the cancer advanced my mother refused to eat and
the nurses tried everything to get her to eat, in the final stages of
her cancer she was moved to a small ward with two beds and i
moved into the ward with her, I was told to keep moistening her lips
with lemon sticks, towards the end the Doctor came and increased
her morphine to make her more comfortable, i was then told to get
my family around her and not to give her any more lemon sticks as
the end was near, she died a few hours after, i could not fault the
hospital or the staff, they gave me all m y meals for 48 hours was
allowed to use the nurses shower, but I do think that because it
was a country cottage hospital the treatment was a lot better than
a large hospital, I would have hated my mother to have had to go in
one of the large hospital, staff do not have the time to spend with
patients.my mother knew all the staff in the hopsital she was in.
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I want the LCP for my own death or for that of a friend or relative. In
this society full of unrealistic expectations, sometimes we need to
accept that we are all mortal and death comes to us all. I, for one,
will hope to pass away comfortably and peacefully - and accept my
fate with dignity.
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190
39
This to me is far worse than the Jimmy saville story - if it's such a
good idea why are we the only Country in the World who uses it.?
Click to rate
Steph, Leics, 2 years ago
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This is the most ill-informed article I have read in a long time Melanie Phillips, you should be ashamed. The LCP, in my opinion,
is the best thing to happen in hospital medicine in many years.
Medicine, by its modern nature, is very interventionalist and the
LCP provides a tool for healthcare professionals to assess, with a
patient and their family, how much intervention is appropriate at the
end of life. I am sorry to hear of unsatisfactory care provided in
some of the examples above, but that is specific to each situation,
and not a reflection of care or the LCP in general. End of life care is
emotive enough, without this sensationalist ill-informed claptrap
causing fear, at a stage of life that is already naturally frightening. I
have seen exceptional care provided many times, meaning
individuals died with minimal distress and easing their loved ones'
grief. Although your sole goal may be selling newspapers, spare a
thought for those affected by your choice of subject matter
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309
44
This piece is the biggest load of drivel I have ever heard. 1. Fact:
people die, the pathway is designed to help people pass away
peacefully 2. Stating people may be using the pathway to release
beds, is just a ridiculous statement and the person making it
should defend this comment or remove it. 3. patients who are able
to tolerate food and drink are offered it and assisted in consuming
it. You would not put a dying patient through the trauma of inserting
a peg tube, just so they can consume food in the last few days.
Finally yes communication needs to be better with patients
relatives, but to basically say the pathway is used to kill patients is
totally unacceptable
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220
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196
40
What an ill informed article. Patients are placed on this only when
treatment options have been exhausted or none are available and it
is agreed that further treatment which can often be invasive or
unpleasant will just prolong the dying phase, this is not a decision
made quickly or to clear hospital beds!!! When patients are
reaching this end stage often blood tests, investigations and putting
needles in to give intravenous fluids are very distressing for the
patient. As a doctor I would not want this for myself or my loved
ones, I would rather be kept comfortable and it feels cruel to do this
to patients for no benefit. When you reach the dying stage your
body doesn't need the food and fluid you normally do. Often nausea
is a problem and generally patients don't have any appetite. You
don't need fluid like normal so if we put up a drip to stop people
'dying of dehydration' fluid will often collect in their lungs or other
areas making it hard to breath which is distressing.
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