Tags
Elderly, End of life, Euthanasia, healthcare rationing, Terminally ill, UK, universal healthcare
As the NHS defends its end of life care treatments or lack thereof, they will not accept that starving, denying a patient hydration and heavily sedating a patient until they finally die is murder. I do not consider this procedure a mercy killing aka euthanasia, but then again, neither does the NHS.
There are concerns that this procedure, i.e., the denial of food and water along with prolonged heavy sedation masks a patient’s vital signs. Doctors have complained that if there is a chance that said patient is not really near death, this cost-effective procedure as dictated by the NHS will disguise that prognosis.
One acknowledges that there are those who have suffered so long that they may in fact welcome death. On the other hand, there are those who would embrace life for as long as they can. However, we are talking about universal healthcare, which is solely based on cost effectiveness. This rationing treatment procedure is rendered to patients for no other purpose than to cut costs. Hence, the NHS decides when enough is enough and doctors as required by NHS guidelines follow through.
That is why the NHS does not cannot label this treatment or lack thereof euthanasia. It is murder and no matter how hard the NHS works to cover its rear by justifying said procedure, nothing will change that fact.
Take note America.
“Patients with terminal illness are being heavily sedated by doctors before their deaths in a form of ‘slow euthanasia’, research suggests.
A poll of nearly 3,000 doctors found that almost one in five had administered infusions of drugs to keep patients unconscious for hours or days at a time.
In appropriate doses, sedatives and strong painkillers are considered a valuable way of easing the pain and anxiety of patients who are dying with conditions such as cancer.
But 18.7 per cent of British doctors polled said they used drugs to invoke ‘continuous deep sedation’ in a dying patient, a practice which in other countries is seen as an alternative to legalised euthanasia.
GPs and hospital doctors who are not palliative care specialists were more likely to report using high doses of sedatives or painkillers to keep patients asleep, leading to calls for all doctors to have mandatory training in the care of dying patients.
Guidelines for care at the end of life emphasise that doctors should always act in a patient’s best interests and act within the law, which prohibits euthanasia or actively helping someone to die.
The study, published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, also found that of the sample of 2,786 doctors, those who strongly supported the legalisation of assisted suicide were nearly 40 per cent more likely to employ continued deep sedation than the average.
By contrast, doctors who reported strong religious beliefs or who actively opposed changing the law were less likely to report sedating patients before death.
In most cases sedation was used for between one and seven days or less than 24 hours. But in a significant minority of patients — 8 per cent — doctors reported sedating patients for more than a week before they died.
Clive Seale, a professor of medical sociology who led the study at Queen Mary, University of London, said that deliberately keeping patients unconscious until death was controversial, with some physicians viewing it as a form of ‘slow euthanasia’.
‘Sedation in itself not directly kill a patient, but it does put them to sleep and is associated with other things such as the withdrawal of fluids and ventilation,’ he added.
‘In this country it can be seen as a form of treatment to relieve intractable suffering but in the Netherlands and Belgium, doctors also see it as an easier alternative to legalised euthanasia.”
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