Liverpool Care Pathway - A Fatal Diagnosis May Have Fatal Consequences

When doctors get it wrong, death bills and death pathways can only compound the error.

Mail Online reports on Herlinda Garcia. Mrs Garcia was diagnosed with terminal stage-four breast cancer. She underwent chemotherapy. She lost her hair and became deeply depressed. Treatment continued for seven months. This was in Victoria, Texas.

Had this been in the UK, Mrs Garcia might well have been persuaded against such futile treatments and placed on the LCP.

Had Lord Falconer's bill gone through, Mrs Garcia might well have considered euthanasia rather than undergo such futile treatments.

Had she been of the same mind as the Italian judge, Pietro D’Amico, she might well have undertaken the journey to Dignitas.

It wasn't and she didn't. Just as well. She was wrongly diagnosed.

As was Pietro D’Amico!

- The Italian Insider

This is The Local –

July 11, 2013
By LEAF ARBUTHNOT

ROME – A judge misdiagnosed with cancer ended his life in a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland despite being in good health, an autopsy has shown.

Pietro D’Amico, 62, travelled to Switzerland in April to commit suicide after having been informed by Italian doctors that he had terminal cancer. When his widow and daughter requested an autopsy from Swiss authorities, D’Amico’s body showed no signs of dangerous illness.





Michele Roccisano, the family’s lawyer and an old friend of D’Amico’s, said that the medical report carried out on the corpse ruled out “categorically” the existence of a “grave and incurable disease”. Roccisano described the case as a “scientific error which resulted in fatal consequences.”

This is Mail Online -

It wasn't until Mrs Garcia went to another doctor because she was suffering anxiety that she was offered a small amount of hope when a series of scans cast doubt on her original diagnosis.

The really frightening thing is that, if she had sought help for her anxiety in Oregon, Mrs Garcia might well have been persuaded to end it all with dignity!

This is KHOU. com -