Liverpool Care Pathway - The Pro-Death Advocacy

The Pro-Death Advocacy is everywhere to be heard. And seen.

The BBC (once, affectionately, called Auntie) is now part of the pro-death candidacy. Since 2008 the Beeb has broadcast several programmes, both factional and fictional, portraying assisted suicide in a positive and admiring light.

Dr Peter Saunders of Care not Killing pointed out that the Terry Pratchet documentary promoting assisted suicide called ‘Choosing to Die’ was the fifth programme produced by the BBC in three years to promote euthanasia.

According to this abstract published in Sage Journals, the Terry Pratchet documentary showing of the euthanasia of Peter Smedley broke the BBC’s own editorial guidelines about showing suicide -


MEDICAL LAW INTERNATIONAL

The Role of the Media in Shaping the UK Debate on ‘Assisted Dying’

1. Peter Saunders*

Abstract

This paper reviews the legislative background, the major stakeholders and the alignment of the various media in the UK debate on ‘assisted dying’. It explains the way the four main arenas of debate—parliament, the institutions, the courts and the media—have engaged with the issues and then outlines how the pro-legalisation lobby has courted media publicity through high-profile personal stories, court cases, parliamentary bills and amendments, celebrity endorsement and the Falconer commission. In particular it argues that the BBC has breached its own editorial guidelines on both impartiality and suicidal portrayal and is at risk of promoting further suicides by fuelling suicide contagion. It concludes that the police and the courts must uphold the will of parliament and that the media must act responsibly in covering the debate, giving equal weight and exposure to the arguments of both sides and following international guidelines on the coverage of individual cases.

The pro-death candidacy is downsizing care. This is the Communitarian programme. To strive for life is an act of cruelty. If your Communitarian profile fits, they will let you go, even help you on your way with some palliative pathway.

It is the cheaper option. It is the Affordable Care option promoted by "Zeke" and Don. The gap cannot be breached. It is now a gaping black hole. The state cannot afford the pensions. The state cannot afford the pensioners.

The BBC stands accused. It has popularised and promoted, justified and defended, the hopeless resort of the hopeless.

The frail and the fragile, the vulnerable and the elderly, are under pressure to justify their existence. Many, already feeling acutely aware that they are a burden, will seek to make an end of it all. The psychological effects are undetermined and undeterminable. Mental health impacts directly upon the physical.

THE WERTHER EFFECT

Some of our misconceptions are formed in school but most of us see the world through television, movies, newspapers, magazines and books. That's a problem because of the phenomenon some psychiatrists call the "Werther Effect"

Werther was the hero of a novel written by German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe more than two hundred years ago. The book winds up with a passage in which Werther dresses in boots, a blue coat and a yellow vest, sits at his desk with an open book, and shoots himself.

In the next few years so many young men dressed themselves as Werther and sat at a desk with an open book to shoot themselves that the book was banned in several countries.

In April of 1994 singer Kurt Cobain shot himself. For the rest of the year a surprising number of teen-age suicides played Cobain tapes as they killed themselves, and some left notes naming Cobain.

In May of 1998 one fan killed herself and two others tried to at the funeral of Japanese rock star Hideto Matsumoto, a few days after Matsumoto hung himself with a towel.

Psychiatrists know that one suicide in a mental hospital is liable to be followed by others, and more than 20 years ago American sociologist David Phillips found that the same pattern holds in the outside world.

At the time the U.S. suicide rate averaged 1,200 to 1,700 every month, depending on the time of year and other factors. Phillips found an average increase of nearly 60 in the month after any suicide reported on the front page of either the New York Times or the New York Daily News.

A cross-party group of MPs accused the BBC of showing “persistent bias” in favour of euthanasia and signed an Early Day Motion which accused the BBC of conducting a “multi-million pound campaign” to promote euthanasia.

They were unable to turn the tide.

More recently, Anna Soubry and Norman Lamb have come out in support of "assisted dying". 

In September, the Liberal Democrats backed a motion in conference saying the law should be changed to allow medically assisted dying, subject to rigorous safeguards to prevent abuse.

'Rigorous safeguards to prevent abuse'...

That's how it all starts out. Just look across the Manche and the German Ocean to the mainland and see how it ends up.

Elsewhere, News.com.au reports that Dr. Philip "Death" Nitschke is using Silk Road to push euthanasia drugs...

IT'S called Silk Road and it's one of the internet's most secretive destinations.

It is an online black market for illicit drugs like ecstasy and cocaine that is the scourge of law enforcement and Customs.

Silk Road is a shadowy website with an often shadowy clientele. But Dr Philip Nitschke, a prominent euthanasia advocate who is one of Australia's most controversial doctors and often referred to as "Doctor Death", has found an unusual audience for the service – the elderly.

Exit International, the outspoken doctor's assisted-suicide advocacy group, has provided its mostly aged followers with a manual for how to obtain suicide medication through the encrypted black market.

Dr Nitschke said his organisation published the guide because a Customs crackdown on euthanasia medication entering the country was causing many supporters to lose their money on seized medication.

Customs figures show the number of detections of euthanasia drugs such as Nembutal (which contains the barbiturate pentobarbitone) has tripled in the past three years, from 25 in 2009-10 to 76 in the last financial year.

"They might be 80-year-olds, but they don't like losing their $400," Dr Nitschke told news.com.au, adding that his more sophisticated strategies may help patients save their money.

"They might be 80-year-olds, but they don't like losing their $400," says Nitschke. Well that's a pretty ageist comment, first off. Second, speaking as an ageing 65-year-old, if you're going to do yourself in, a material $400 is pretty immaterial at the end of the day your days! You can't take it with you.