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may be the slippery slope to backdoor euthanasia

By Gerald Warner UK Last updated: September 3rd, 2009

Could the most ardent fan of George Orwell have asked for a more classic, totalitarian euphemism than “the Liverpool Care Pathway”? That is the technical term employed by the NHS for a system of patient assessment that selects those deemed “close to death” for withdrawal of food and fluids or being placed on continuous sedation until they die.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, a group of experts concerned with care for the terminally ill has denounced this system as sometimes amounting, in the words of Dr Peter Hargreaves, consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, to a “self-fulfilling prophecy”. Signs that a patient is in fact improving can be concealed by the LCP system. Patients may become semi-conscious or confused simply as a result of pain-killing drugs if they are also dehydrated. Dr Hargreaves has taken patients off the “pathway” and found that they then lived for “significant” amounts of time.

The medical profession is now concerned and rightly so. In 2007-08, 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain resulted from continuous deep sedation – twice the rate of the Netherlands with its notorious culture of death and legalised euthanasia. The question has to be asked: is this euthanasia by the back door? Is the NHS getting rid of bed-blockers even faster than David Cameron in his purge of the Tory old guard?

It was instructive to see how little examination this life-or-death issue merited on the television news: a brief mention, with no film or interviews. Contrast that with the prolonged and sympathetic coverage given to any crusader for “the right to die” and it is not difficult to detect where media sympathies lie. That is an appalling example of the liberal consensus at work – climate change and immigration are among other similarly manipulated issues in the media.

Inch by inch, the state is taking over not only the everyday minutiae of how we live our lives, but also how long those lives should be. America has risen up against Obama’s “death panels”; it is unlikely the British have the will to exercise the same instinct of self-preservation by halting this drift towards the unthinkable.

No one got any comments on this?

very interesting article Carole.....

Sorry Carole, I was doing lurgy yesterday.

Two points really,both contentious.
I had my cat put down the same week as my mother died of bowel cancer and I know which end I would prefer. Harold Shipman did it for all the wrong reasons I know but I really would not mind dying in the way his patients did.Happy,relaxed at home with somebody they trusted,albeit misplaced,with them.

I don't have a big problem with witholding food but dehydration is a different matter.I have tried it and it hurts.IT SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN!

It's a bit of a biased and not very full article, so hard to give an informed opinion - how long is a 'significant' amount of time and how do the patients feel about the treatment they are receving and the alternatives? Most people I have known who are terminally ill don't want their life prolonged for the sake of it when it comes to the final stages.

As it is, a sort of euthanasia happens every day with GPs giving morphine and similar to the elderly or terminally ill. Yes it's a pain killer but it will also help the end along.

I'd personally prefer it to be voluntary euthanasia by the front door.

We were told my aunt was on the Liverpool Care Pathway. Ok she is 86 and very ill. But she still deserves water and food, which she is getting, we are told. They assess her every couple of hours according to the guidelines. So if they see improvement I would hope they will try to give her some treatment to help her survive. But if she pulls through a nursing home would have to be a new home to her. Would she want that? We don't think so. No easy answer.

My mother was diabetic and slipped into a coma about ten days before her inevitable and wholly expected death. I would have left her but my dad called the doctor because he thought it the right thing to do, officially rather than morally.
Having been called, the doctor was obliged to bring her out of the coma with insulin so she could have a few more days of pain and morphine, he left us plenty!