Reaching a ‘good age’ used to be looked upon as an achievement. Now, it is very much a liability. This from the MailOnline -
Don't fall for this toxic idea that the old are disposable
By JAN MOIR
Last updated at 8:43 AM on 17th June 2011
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.
 |
| Terry Pratchett, right, shakes Peter Smedley's hand as he sits with his wife Christine. |
Yes, death, assisted suicide and euthanasia were back in the headlines this week, following Monday evening’s BBC broadcast of Terry Pratchett’s provocative film, Choosing To Die.
The documentary showed his journey to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to follow two British men who had decided to end their lives.
One of them, Peter Smedley, a millionaire hotelier who had motor neurone disease, later invited Pratchett and the cameras back to record his last moments. This was the first time an actual suicide has been filmed and broadcast in this country — and the distressing scenes naturally provoked strong reactions.
 |
| Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease four years ago |
This examination of euthanasia was given added pathos by the fact that Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease four years ago. Since then, he has been a passionate campaigner for individuals to die as they choose, like many who wish the practice of euthanasia to be legal and the law to be clarified on assisted suicides in this country.
Pratchett's preferred choice is to die in his garden, at home, with a glass of nice brandy to wash down the cocktail of drugs that would kill him.
Pratchett's preferred choice is to die in his garden, at home, with a glass of nice brandy to wash down the cocktail of drugs that would kill him.
Like all the men featured, he is a strong and dominant man, who cannot abide the idea of not being in control.
'My life, my death, my choice,' is his mantra. his poor wife would prefer to nurse hm to the end, but her wishes have been dismissed.
As we kept hearing over and over again, it is all about choice. His choice.
I can see that to be in control of one's death is particularly important in the wake of a shattering diagnosis, the one blip of comfort in a world that has become intolerable.
Yet i have reservations about it being a selfish decision, leaving devastated wives, husbands, sons and daughters wondering why they weren't enough to make their loved one want to live.
Should we be allowed to choose to die?
It is one of the polarising questions of our age, with ramifications not just for the individuals and their families, but for everyone. However, watching Pratchett’s rosy, unquestioning documentary — an advertorial for death, with its lush music and sweeping views of the Swiss countryside — made me very glad that the
For those of us with older relatives or who are getting older ourselves, surely the worry is that euthanasia would creep into society, quickly becoming an acceptable, everyday event.
For those of us with older relatives or who are getting older ourselves, surely the worry is that euthanasia would creep into society, quickly becoming an acceptable, everyday event.
 ...a creeping and inevitable mindset would flourish within the Adult Social Services, the NHS and in society at large, where old people would be increasingly seen as redundant and disposable, ready for the cull.  |
The concern is not so much that older people would be at the mercy of conniving relatives desperate to get their hands on the cash in the attic or the mortgage-free home — although that would happen, too — but that ALL senior citizens would become downgraded in society.
Also, that euthanasia-on-demand would alter not just their quality of life, but ultimately the value of their lives, which would soon be seen as easily expendable.
And that a creeping and inevitable mindset would flourish within the Adult Social Services, the NHS and in society at large, where old people would be increasingly seen as redundant and disposable, ready for the cull.
And, finally, that calculations would be made, finances would be taken into account, decisions reached, lethal cocktails mixed.
After all, it is happening already. This week, new research showed that elderly women are being denied life-saving breast cancer surgery that is routinely given to younger patients.
The National Cancer Intelligence Research Network found that some doctors look at a patient’s age in their notes and decide on a treatment plan before they have met them.
And only last week, a report by The King’s Fund think-tank warned that all elderly cancer patients in Britain were being diagnosed later than those in other European countries and were less likely to be referred for operations.
Previous estimates claim that 15,000 elderly die prematurely every year because NHS cancer care is not as good as that provided in Europe and the U.S..
To throw legalised euthanasia into this toxic, ageist mix would be a disaster.
Yes, it might be the right choice for Terry Pratchett and other single-minded, brave men like him, but it’s not the right choice for society.
The Department of Health committed to investing 286 million pounds over the two years to 2011 to support implementation of this End of Life Care Strategy. That is 286 million pounds spent to assist people on their path to the next world while denying the necessary funding to keep them alive and well in this!
A Daily Mail on-line article outlines how we in the UK have the worst cancer survival rate in the western world. Doctors in our local surgeries, hospitals and health care centres are providing us with treatments based on our illness, our age, our families. The Daily Mail article explains how doctors tend to late-diagnose older patients or provide them with less beneficial treatments. The elderly are routinely denied surgery or drugs.
It is a duty incumbent upon every medical person to protect life and to do no harm. And yet, through the LCP, there is a policy set in place at Caterham Dene - and across the NHS - to make no great effort to intervene to preserve life, to let them go and even to help them on their way.
So much of the public purse to spend on death, so little to spend on life. There is something very wrong here. The elderly, suffering from the most terminal of all illnesses - OLD-AGE - are on the sharp end of this cutting-edge of end-of-life policies. A culture of death really is pervading the NHS in the UK. A dark shadow is stalking our hospitals and care homes. The right to death is becoming paramount over the right to life!
No comments:
Post a Comment