Liverpool Care Pathway - And The Right To Life

Did not the Declaration of Independence guarantee certain unalienable rights? Among these were the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

The Right to Life...

The right to life was guaranteed in the constitution. Why, then, has Oklahoma deemed it necessary to join the state of Idaho in securing a law to preserve life? Is the US Constitution held in so little disregard...?

This is Stateline -

The law prohibits health care providers from making medical decisions based on the assumption that “extending the life of an elderly, disabled, or terminally ill individual (is) of lower value than extending the life of an individual who is younger, nondisabled, or not terminally ill.”

Value judgements of another's life should not be the domain of the doctor; it is not for the medical staff – not for State appointee, nor for anyone else – to say that this is a life not worthy of life, either by comparison or degree, nor by absolute definition. We must never go there again.

Stateline continues -

Philosophical Divide

Although the Oklahoma law received little attention at home and has gone virtually unnoticed elsewhere, it revisits a philosophical divide that has periodically gripped the nation. On the one side is the palliative and hospice care movement which holds that terminally ill patients should be able to forgo high-risk, low-odds treatments in favor of comfort care at the end of life. On the other side is a branch of the right-to-life movement which believes that doctors are inclined to withhold life-preserving treatments when, in their opinion, a patient’s life has lost its “value.”

Despite sharply divided opinions during the bill’s debate, the measure passed easily, 41-2 in the Senate and 85-11 in the House.

“We are starting to see a trend nationwide,” Johnson said. He said that the law’s origins go back to the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman in a vegetative state whose husband and parents battled in court for seven years over his desire to remove her feeding tube.

The husband prevailed and the feeding tube was removed in March 2005 to the consternation of activists in the pro-life and disability movements. Schiavo died within days.

The right to life is no longer guaranteed; it is neither guaranteed nor respected. What would the Founding Fathers have made of this?

This is The Raw Story -

This is the right to death.

The current interpretation is that the constitution is a 'living constitution', which means you may make of it what you want and make of it what you will...

until it bears absolutely no resemblance at all to the original document…?

This document was not just a declaration of independence from the Crown; it was a document to defend the people from its government. It was to break, fundamentally, from the European model, once and for all.

 "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"










The constitution, set in place and signed in congress, has been a long journey for the American people. It has been a journey of struggle and struggles.

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

The document is the American dream.

Who may, they must recall the broadcast of King's stirring staccato cadences as he enounced his dream upon the steps of the Capitol and urged Americans to live out the true meaning of the document and its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." ...

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…

King was urging Americans not to change the document, but to live out the true meaning of the document.

They should do so with renewed endeavour and revoke these laws of death.

Liverpool Care Pathway - Submissions To The Review

The LCP Review Submission prepared in an individual capacity by Professor David Jones

The Review Submission

sets out a Catholic understanding of the ethical principles relevant to the evaluation of end-of-life care.

This is available here.

Professor Jones says that 

It explains the concerns that generated the call, by Archbishop Peter Smith, Chair of the Department for Citizenship and Responsibility, for an inquiry into the implementation of the Pathway and identifies empirical questions that need to be answered in order to address these concerns. - Catholic News

As Professor Jones says, his Review Submission is prepared in an individual capacity and, therefore, it is rather grandiose of him to 

     a) claim to set out a Catholic understanding of the ethical principles pertaining to EoLC when,

     b) that does not admit of his bias in favour of EoLC Pathways in general and of the LCP in particular which

     c) also admit of unproven medical and scientific assumptions that it is possible to diagnose dying.

A comment on Professor Jones' Review Statement is here-

Comment on DJ review for CH

By:

Patrick Pullicino
Anthony Cole
Philip Howard

One Response to Comment on DJ review for CH

- Mail Online

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Truth About CPR

There is truth and there is truth and there is truth. The fact is that nothing is certain. But when the alternative is death, should we not try?


They tried -



They tried -


- Mail Online

The Herald Sun reports that Fiedler is one of seven cardiac arrest patients in Australia who have been treated with the band.

Three have been revived from being declared clinically dead for 40 to 60 minutes, it said. 

AutoPulse machines have been on the market since 2003 and are being used more and more around the world.

Zoll, the company which makes the device, said: 'Victims receive more consistent, high-quality compressions than those delivered by simple automated CPR devices, which means improved blood flow.'

The U.S. National Centre for Biotechnology Information said a recent study on the effectiveness of the machine showed that it had a 'promising' future.

But there will be exceptions for its deployment and use...

And they may not try -

Using Videos to Help Patients Plan End-of-Life Care

Volandes says the videos provide a compelling visual of procedures and outcomes that can be hard to explain with words alone. "I can talk until I am blue in the face about advanced dementia, but if I show someone 30 seconds of a woman with advanced dementia, they immediately get it," he says, a point that was reinforced the first time he admitted a patient to a hospital. The patient, a highly literate and retired poetry professor with widely metastatic cancer, was baffled when Volandes asked what measures the hospital should take in the event her heart stopped beating. Struggling to explain procedures he himself had yet to perform, Volandes suggested a tour of the I.C.U., where by happenstance he and his patient witnessed a cardiac arrest. Volandes repeated the tour with other patients, often sneaking into the I.C.U. at late hours when he was less likely to be challenged. When nurses objected to the privacy violations, the idea of creating the videos was born.

Now used in 35 large health systems across the country, including Seattle, Wash.–based Group Health Cooperative, the videos deliver educational messages about various serious health conditions and show real patients living with the diseases and undergoing life-sustaining procedures—including the use of feeding tubes, ventilators, and defibrillators, and for advanced cancer the experience of sepsis.¹ The videos are scripted by a team that includes interventionists, cardiologists, and oncologists, as well as health literacy experts, ethicists, and palliative care doctors and are reviewed by as many as 50 experts for each of the conditions.
- The Commonwealth Fund

- Smithsonian.com

Q: Why are the videos effective?

A: Pictures speak a thousand words. The videos speak hundreds of thousands of words. We're a visually literate society, but we are still talking to patients as Hippocrates did 2,000 years ago. I always make it clear the videos are not meant to replace the patient-doctor relationship; it's to reinforce it. It's about empowering, giving patients the means to understand. Doctors aren't always trained to have these conversations.
- Chicago Tribune

It's about downsizing care. They want you to decide not to try.

In 2010, Arun Bhasin, 53, was found lying unconscious in Croydon after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Doctors hooked him up to a Zoll AutoPulse pump which maintained Mr Bhasin's heartbeat for more than three hours while he was stablised by medics.

 

At the time, Nigel Raghunath, lead consultant in A&E, who treated Mr Bhasin said he had never seen such a remarkable case in his 15 years in Accident and Emergency care.

He said: 'Even a fully-trained professional finds it hard to deliver consistent, high quality chest compressions when attempting to resuscitate someone whose heart has stopped beating.

- Mail Online

Liverpool Care Pathway - Closer To The Brink Than You Think

We are at the very brink. The time for tough talking is here. The State has decreed that the elderly are a financial burden we can no longer afford.

It's time for tough talking and plain speaking.

The elderly are singled out for mention...

The frail, the fragile, the weak, the vulnerable, those limited in capacity of mind or limb: all are now at risk. These are a luxury the State can no longer afford.

They can no longer afford you; you are a burden too much to bear...

Can that be?

The pressure is on.

The alarm bells have been ringing for a long time -

Are we killing our elderly?

Care of Britain’s elderly is under intense scrutiny, with a number of reports in recent days highlighting the risks and suffering of patients at the hands of the NHS or family members. 

Some experts in care for the terminally ill claim new NHS guidance on the treatment of dying patients means some could be given sedation to help them pass away, masking any improvement in their condition.

Earlier, Britain’s most senior policewoman warned relaxation of assisted suicide laws could be exploited by families to kill burdensome elderly relatives. Barbara Wilding says a growing rift between young and old generations, combined with the pressures of an ageing population, is a significant challenge for police.

Last week the Patients Association published personal accounts from hundreds of relatives of patients, most of whom died, following their care in NHS hospitals. It said one million NHS patients had been the victim of “neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes cruel” treatment over the past six years.

- The Telegraph [Alastair Jamieson]

The Hell Hole is opening up before us.

THE leader of Scotland's doctors has questioned whether society can afford to pay thousands of pounds to keep terminally-ill people alive for weeks or months when health service budgets are under unprecedented strain.

Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the British Medical Association Scotland, said in some cases tens of thousands of pounds were spent on drugs to extend cancer patients' lives for relatively short periods.

Speaking ahead of his organisation's annual meeting, the GP said the country had to debate the merits of these kinds of aggressive treatments and the effects they had on the NHS budget. But he stressed any decision had to be made at a society level, rather than being left to doctors.

Patient groups are concerned that many cancer treatments are being rationed by the NHS because they are deemed too expensive.

While the NHS budget for Scotland rose slightly this year, the increasing cost of energy, food and drugs has meant health boards are having to make efficiency savings just to stand still. In many cases this has included recruitment freezes and a reduction in the NHS workforce of more than 3,000 in the past year.

Keighley said the Scottish Government was facing a "budgetary cliff edge" amid concerns about the negative effect of cuts. But he said there were areas where wider debate was needed to decide if Scotland could still afford to pay for services where good outcomes were limited.

- The Scotsman

Now, Mr. Lamb is openly saying it -

- Mail Online


What awaits us in old age? Well, the triumph of actually reaching old age for a start — not a privilege offered to all. Yet if one was to look on the downside, the scenario that looms large gets bleaker with each passing year — and economic crisis.

Dwindling pensions, soaring fuel bills, children who plot to murder us in our sleep, doctors who don’t care if we live or die?

The twilight years might be preferable to the cold alternative, but the prospect of facing them is ever grimmer. Particularly if those years are to be accompanied by new social pressures to do the decent thing and kill ourselves the second we become a burden to our nearest and dearest.

- JAN MOIR [Mail Online]

Whatever is your belief, it is true to say that how you view the person affects how you treat the person.

How will that translate to how the elderly are treated?

The frail, the fragile, the weak, the vulnerable, those limited in capacity of mind or limb: all are at risk.

Society is at risk. How will this translate to how we conduct ourselves and our affairs? 

We stand at a moral crossroads we have stood at before. Can we afford to take one step once more along the wrong path?

We have already taken that step...

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Sum Of All Fears

The living will that includes an EoL decision to agree to organ donation may become a death wish. It is a clear and present danger, the sum of all fears...


You have made a Living Will or Advance Directive.

The term advance directive (increasingly being replaced by the term advance decision) means a statement explaining what medical treatment the individual would not want in the future, should that individual 'lack capacity' as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The term 'living will', whilst helping people to understand the concept, is somewhat misleading in that, unlike a will, it does not deal with money or property. Moreover, it can relate to all future treatment, not just that which may be immediately life-saving. An advance directive is legally binding in England and Wales. Except in the case where the individual decides to refuse life-saving treatment, it does not have to be written down, although most are and a written document is less likely to be challenged.- Patient.co.uk

You have included all the parameters for treatment or non-treatment and you are sure you have pretty much covered your bases...

I, (name) of (address) wish the following to be considered in the event of my incapacity to give or withhold consent for medical intervention.

If ever I am unable to communicate and have an irreversible condition and I am expected to die in a matter of days or weeks, or if I am in a coma and not expected to regain consciousness or if I have brain damage of disease that makes me unlikely ever to recognise or relate to people then I want treatment only to provide comfort and relieve distress, even if this may shorten my life. I do not want treatment that can only prolong dying.

I consent to any acts or omissions undertaken in accordance with my wishes and I am grateful to those who respect my free choice. I reserve the right to revoke or vary these conditions but otherwise they remain in force.

If I am certified brain dead, should any of my organs be of value to others, I give consent to their removal for the purpose of transplantation. - Patient.co.uk

Hmmm...

"Even if this may shorten my life..."

Well, that forgoes the LCP option. On The Big Questions, Dr. Richard Hain says the LCP is about "not prolonging or hastening it."

Still, this proviso does expand the options for the LCP team...

The organ harvest, the temptation of the Advance Directive and the dangers of euthanasia.

A difficult choice presents itself.

There is another patient who would benefit from organ donation. This patient is on a higher trajectory on the Complete Lives Treatment Curve. 

"Expected to die..."

A decision has to be made. It is very tempting to weigh one life off against the other and make a quick 'quality of life' assessment...

It can't happen.

It won't happen.

It does happen -

- Mail Online

It will happen...

Ethical choices will be stretched and acted upon.

Already, this is happening...

They Can Diagnose Dying... Can't they?

Mail Online reported on the girl who woke up when doctors were preparing to harvest her organs -

She is now making a good recovery at a rehabilitation centre and is able to walk, talk and even ride her horse Mathilde.

Her family is now suing the hospital for damages, claiming that doctors had been desperate to harvest her body parts.

'Those bandits in white coats gave up too quickly because they wanted an organ donor,' her father Kim told the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet.

The family’s lawyer Nils Fjeldberg said that Ms Melchior keeps asking if doctors were trying to kill her.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

Liverpool Care Pathway - Nazifying The NHS

People killed by euthanasia in Belgium are having their organs harvested for transplant surgery, a new report has revealed.

Eurotransplant, a co-ordination group for transplants in Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia, is now devising elaborate protocols for ‘organ donation and transplantation after euthanasia’. Dr Peter Saunders, of Care Not Killing, an umbrella group of more than 50 British medical, disability and religious charities opposed to euthanasia, said he was shocked by the report.

‘I was amazed at how nonchalantly the issue was dealt with as if killing patients and then harvesting their organs was the most natural thing in the world,’ he said.

Criminal activity seizes opportunity for profitability and gain. Expanding the possibilites of ease for organ theft is foolhardy.

It opens up avenues for organ theft to order.

It is the sum of all fears.

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Case For Brewer

When comparison may not discern differences, it is legitimate to suggest the one thing and the other to be indistinguishable and, therefore, identical.


Thus, the Liverpool Care Pathway and the Shipman Care Pathway...

So, also, the Groningen Protocol and the Collin Brewer Protocol.

The Groningen Protocol was developed at the University Medical Center at Groningen. It bears comparison in that respect to the Liverpool Care Pathway, not only in that it bears the name of the city where it was developed, but that it may involve a decision to end a life that lacks 'quality'.

Its authors say the Protocol was developed in order to facilitate with the decision making process when considering actively ending the life of a newborn human child. It provides guidelines to assess the life worthy or not worthy of life within a legal and medical framework. The Protocol was declared to be mandatory by the Dutch Society for Paediatrics in July 2005.

The Collin Brewer Protocol

After-birth abortion is a euphemism dreamed up by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. This has previously been reported in these pages.

This unsavoury pair contributed a paper entitled "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?" to the Journal of Medical Ethics. This was published in February last year. An abstract follows -

ABSTRACT: Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do nothave anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showingthat (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have thesame moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact thatboth are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3)adoption is not always in the best interest of actualpeople, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birthabortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in allthe cases where abortion is, including cases where thenewborn is not disabled.

CONCLUSIONS: If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) forthe potential parents are good enough reasons for having anabortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status ofthe newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither hasany moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then thesame reasons which justify abortion should also justify thekilling of the potential person when it is at the stage ofa newborn.

The Washington Post reported in its opinions column -

The fact is, it is not as unusual for children to be left to die after a failed abortion as some might think. Right now in Philadelphia, abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial for the murder of seven infants who were born alive. According to District Attorney Seth Williams, Gosnell “induced labor, forced the live birth of viable babies in the sixth, seventh, eighth month of pregnancy and then killed those babies by cutting into the back of the neck with scissors and severing their spinal cord.” Prosecutors said that Gosnell ended hundreds of pregnancies in this way. “These killings became so routine that no one could put an exact number on them. They were considered ‘standard procedure.’ ”

May this be called a pre-term Groningen Protocol...?

The Post continues -

Across the border in Canada, the government reports that between 2000 and 2009, 491 babies were left to die after they were born alive during abortions. There are no similar statistics here in the United States, but according to the Abortion Survivors Network there are an estimated 44,000 abortion survivors living in the country today. How many more did not survive for lack of medical care?

When comparison may not discern differences, it is legitimate to suggest the one thing and the other to be indistinguishable and, therefore, identical. May we, then, not rightly suggest that the slippery slope is already a sheer drop and that the case for the Collin Brewer Protocol is proven?

Whatever is your belief, it is true to say that how you view the person affects how you treat the person and, more especially, persons some ethicists might classify as non-persons.

By redefining infanticide as after-birth abortion and the moral status of the individual as a person, murder becomes permissible.

It is an old ploy to keep floating an idea that, thereby, it may cease to appear so novel and extreme. 

Thus does the outrageous gain plausibility and acceptance, by becoming almost tiresome by its very mention. 

It slips in under the radar, a fifth column of ideas that are no longer foreign to our concepts of right and wrong simply because they have permeated our very consciousness and infected our moral outlook, a dark cancer in our soul. 


October Baby 

October Baby October Baby tells the story of college student Hannah whose increasing anxiety and sudden collapse point to the surprising circumstances of her birth. Hannah soon learns from her parents she was adopted and is the survivor of a failed abortion attempt.

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Intrusion Of The Unacceptable Into The Ethical Mainstream

The disgraceful, the obnoxious and the simply repulsive.
Or how it became 'okay' to kill people.



Colin Brewer is to be investigated for his remarks -

- BBC




Sarah Maguire, who stood against the Cornish Nazi in the recent elections, has organised a protest at County Hall. This is to take place at 10.30 am on May 24.

- This is Cornwall

There are others who have made obnoxious remarks, equally unacceptable and disgraceful. Should these persons not be investigated, also?

Baroness Warnock has said -

• That elderly people suffering from dementia are "wasting people's lives" and "wasting the resources of the National Health Service" and should be allowed to die.
• There is "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.
• She hopes people will soon be "licensed to put others down" if they are unable to look after themselves.
• Pensioners who do not want to become a burden on their carers should be helped to die.
• "I think that's the way the future will go; putting it rather brutally, you'd be licensing people to put others down."

These are the words of a well-respected commentator on medical ethics -



- The Telegraph

It used to be that only soldiers, secret agents and public executioners were licenced to kill. The noble Baroness suggests a new category of person to be trained in such skills.

What job title should these public servants be given...? Death facilitators, perhaps?

The Baroness is a firm supporter of euthanasia, as you might expect.

Amongst submissions of evidence to the self-appointed Commission on Assisted Dying is a submission of evidence by...

Baroness Mary Warnock.

The transcript is here.

Martin Amis has made his own 'rivers of blood' prediction against what he has described as "an invasion of terrible immigrants."

Amis, who is 60, predicted that "civil war" would break out between young and old within 10 or 15 years because of the pressures of supporting what he described as a "silver tsunami". 

- The Telegraph

Is Amis not to be investigated? Is this not an incitement of hatred and intolerance?

Britain's population is rapidly ageing.

Between 1983 to 2008 the proportion of people aged 65 or over grew by 1.5 million to 9.8 million, up from 15 to 16 per cent. 

That trend will accelerate in the coming decades.

The fact is that this is a headache of profound proportion for which our planners are struggling to find a final solution.

The open-door policy on immigration was to alter the demography to favour the EU, but also a resort to help fund the pensions black hole. This was just a little Dutch Boy solution of a finger in the dyke.

By 2033, 23 per cent of the population will be 65 or over. If the population hits 70 million by 2029, as recently forecast by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), that will mean the working population will have to support at least 16 million people of current retirement age by 2033.

Enter the Mental Capacity Act and the EoLC Brigade, Chairman Ellershaw and the LCP Red Guards, and 'The Complete Lives' system being eased in.

The LCP, a back-door euthanasia policy that is a Licence to Kill People, has been beavering away for years under the guise of actually providing care.

Actually, it's only to ensure they go quietly.

Actually, it's only a 'rational suicide' for those who consider their lives complete.

It is the pro-death candidacy which is downsizing care.

It all might have gone to plan but for the failure in training. No matter, the Review will set matters to rights.