Liverpool Care Pathway – The Unthinkable Is Policy

The ‘slippery slope' is in place and functioning. It is called the Liverpool Care Pathway.

May god help us all, for there is none other in any authority who will, nor with the will, apparently!

Please sign these petitions now -

          

care2 

Change.org

  

                       GoPetition

                               

                                               Direct Gov e-petition    

                                                        

 Direct Gov e-petition

                                                                                   

To stand by and do nothing while a wrong proceeds unchallenged is to be complicit in it. Complacency permits the unthinkable to become thinkable and the unacceptable to become possible.

Liverpool Care Pathway – The Victims Speak Out

Welcome to the 21^st Century

The practice has long been in place; now, it has a protocol and a name. The cull has already begun.

These responses are taken from the Care2 Petitionsite -

15:10, Feb 06, Mrs. catherine prentice, United Kingdom
Please all sign , my father has just died on lcp, we were not informed at all that he was on this programe . We were told he had hours to live , he lasted 8 days . Im devasted and i feel so guilty . we were led to beleve was best for him . Was not so . This must stop . ITS MURDER .

11:55, Feb 01, Name not displayed, United Kingdom
Please do not let your loved ones go on the lcp,it is wrong in so many ways. My dad died on this lcp,they never even give him a chance to recover,they stop water going into your body,take you off the meds and give you so much morphine,there is no way to see signs of progress. This sounds horrible but its the goverments way of getting people to die faster and clear up hospital bed space. If i could turn back time i would never allow my dad to go on this. My dads words when he died was. "they are animals"

Liverpool Care Pathway – No Match For Compassion

Those standing on the parapet do not need a helpful hand to tip them over the edge, but a tightrope to cross the abyss.

The Telegraph:

No pill or potion is a match for compassion

In a world that must often seem cruel and dark, there is still kindness out there, says Max Pemberton.

Max Pemberton.

Simone is sitting in front of me and crying.

Simone is determined that her daughter will have every opportunity in life and scours charity shops for books for her. Six months ago, however, Simone was involved in a road traffic accident. She slid into depression and, although she continued to work, began to feel that life was not worth living.

While we can explain mood as a set of complex neuro-chemical interactions and prescribe medication that has an effect on these biological pathways, such a reductionist approach does nothing to help understand the interaction between social factors and how someone feels.

But today Simone is crying not because of the bleakness of her situation. She is crying because she is overwhelmed by a stranger's kindness. She shakes her head in disbelief as she tells me the story. One of the administration staff in the outpatient clinic had won a £20 Marks & Spencer voucher in a raffle and gave it to Simone so that she could treat her daughter, who often waits in the department while her mother sees me.

This simple gesture has effectively doubled Simone's income for the week. She's never even shopped in Marks & Spencer. When I think of all the £20 notes that I have frittered away on bottles of wine or late-night taxis, I feel ashamed. That impulsive act of kindness and generosity from a stranger has made all the difference to Simone. It's not just the financial impact it has made; it has shown her that in a world that must often seem cruel and scary and dark, there is still kindness and compassion. And there's not a pill in the world that I could prescribe that would give someone that feeling.

This is, though, a world become cruel, scary and dark. A death culture is now well entrenched in our NHS and beyond, spreading its tentacles worldwide. The LCP is no longer merely a national scandal; its scope has crossed continents and oceans. It is a self-fulfilling tool to 'diagnose' death. And, if some have their way,  pills and potions are to be offered to tip those on the parapet over the edge. 

Liverpool Care Pathway – And The Fallibilities of Diagnosis

One-way path to death
Veronica Stabbins

My mother, aged 99 and living in a nursing home, was taken as an emergency to a hospital A & E department with acute respiratory distress. My brother and I arrived soon after. The doctor told us there was no help for her and that she would probably only live for about two hours.

Obviously unwell, but responsive, she was transferred to a stark room and her saline drip taken down. A nurse wanted to remove her oxygen mask, but she insisted on keeping it, as it helped her breathing.

Another nurse was about to give her an injection of morphine, but I challenged this as my mother was not complaining of pain. The nurse said it was normal protocol.

In answer to our questions, we were told that Mother had been placed on the “care pathway of the dying” and that she would not be given any food or water but would have regular sedation.

We asked if she could be transferred to a private ward to be more comfortable in her final hours. This was arranged promptly. Her physician confirmed she was indeed terminally ill and no medication would be appropriate, only care. To everyone’s surprise, she began to improve and after a week could take sips of water and food.

Mother lived for a year, visited daily by family and friends. The highlight of her “extra” year was her 100th birthday, when she entertained 40 people to a tea party.

She would not have lived that extra year, had she been denied water and sedated in hospital last year.

This death culture is now well entrenched in our NHS and beyond, spreading its tentacles worldwide. The LCP is no longer merely a national scandal; its scope has crossed continents and oceans. It is a self-fulfilling tool to 'diagnose' death.

Liverpool Care Pathway – And The Culture Of Death

Assisted Suicide a Medical Treatment

Cheryl K. Smith, a staff lawyer for the Hemlock Society, now Compassion in Dying, was a principal drafter (65) of the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the law that has transformed assisted suicide into a medical treatment in Oregon. 

According to news accounts,

Nitschke, outspoken proponent of the right to die, had a somewhat troubled childhood. As a young teen, he was deeply unhappy and, at the age of 15, he took out his frustrations by killing a neighbour's dog. He devised a plan in which he faked going to church on Sunday, then doubled back to the neighbour's house to strangle the dog. When the dog didn't die, he slit its throat with a knife.

The story has caused embarrassment to Nitschke over the years. But he has explained it by chalking it up to his immaturity. "I was very young; I just didn't have the world experience to be able to make good judgments," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. "It was the ill-considered action of a child,” he says now.

Opponents to the legalisation of euthanasia point out that according to Nitschke's logic, a 15-year-old who kills a neighbour's dog is exhibiting the actions of a child who is too immature to make good judgments, but a child who decides to kill himself is, apparently, to be regarded as sufficiently mature to do so.

In an interview with National Review, he said:

So all people qualify, not just those with the training, knowledge, or resources to find out how to “give away” their life. And someone needs to provide this knowledge, training, or recourse necessary to anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, [and] the troubled teen….

This would mean that the so-called “peaceful pill” should be available in the supermarket so that those old enough to understand death could obtain death peacefully at the time of their choosing.(75)

He emphasized that he did, indeed, believe that children and teens should have access to assisted suicide. “Why should they have to wait till they’re 18?” he asked.(76) And he told Australian radio that teenagers should be given access to the means of assisted suicide “in the same way I’d give it to every other lucid Australian.”

According to Body and Health Canada,

Suicide is the second leading cause of death - following motor vehicle accidents - among teenagers and young adults.

On average, adolescents aged 15 to 19 years have an annual suicide rate of about 1 in 10,000 people. Among youths 12 to 16 year of age, up to 10% of boys and 20% of girls have considered suicide. Gay and lesbian adolescents are more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers.

According to The Poverty Site,

Suicide is now the second most common cause of death of young men after accidents, claiming more lives than cancer.

Fear not, for help is on its way to help them on their way...

The illustrious folk promoting this culture of death have marked the terminally ill and ‘defectives’ up for such ‘mercy killing.’

Stephen Hawking would have been a prime candidate:

The realisation that I had an incurable disease, that was likely to kill me in a few years, was a bit of a shock. How could something like that happen to me? Why should I be cut off like this? 

It used to be that a good doctor would fight to save every life. A person would take up first aid for the same reason. It was to make a difference. It was to do something, anything, rather than just stand by and do nothing, a passive observer, while events unfolded and took their precipitate course.

All that has changed. We now live in a society of moribund defeatists. We now live in a society which would welcome the enemy to our gates and accept them within our walls.The LCP slots well into this framework, its practitioners not seeking signs of life but actively seeking 'signs' of death..

Some memorable quotes:

"Remember to look up at the stars and not down to your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up."

-- Professor Stephen Hawking on his 70th birthday.

It ain't over 'til it's over.

-- Yogi Berra

 We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God's good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.

-- Winston S Churchill

Churchill suffered fearful bouts of depression which he referred to as his black dog. It is as well for this country, this people and the free world that he chose not to succumb, that there was no Exit International to promote and assist in a final solution to resolve his predicament.

This death culture is now well entrenched in our NHS and beyond, spreading its tentacles worldwide. The LCP is no longer merely a national scandal; its scope has crossed continents and oceans. It is a self-fulfilling tool to 'diagnose' death.

The fallibilities of diagnosis are well-reported and well known.

Liverpool Care Pathway – And The Culture Of ‘Non-intervention’

According to LCP documents, loss of interest in and a reduced need for food when a person stops eating and drinking is part of the normal dying process…

Is caring become so dispassionate and detached, so disconnected and dysfunctional? This from the Mail Online –

Four patients die thirsty or starving EVERY DAY on our hospital wards show damning new statistics

·        Data shows 1,316 deaths were linked to or directly caused by dehydration and malnutrition in 2010

·        Figures are far higher than in 2000, when 862 deaths were recorded

·        One hospital forced to prescribe drinking water for its patients

 By SOPHIE BORLAND

Four patients are dying hungry and thirsty on hospital wards every day, shocking figures reveal.

Dehydration or malnutrition directly caused or was linked to 1,316 deaths last year in NHS trusts and privately run hospitals.

The revelation follows a series of damning reports accusing staff of failing to address the most basic needs of the vulnerable, particularly the elderly.

Officials who compiled the figures pointed out that not all deaths could be directly blamed on poor care. Some illnesses such as Alzheimer’s or certain forms of cancer make it very difficult for patients to eat or drink.

But campaigners said that no one in this day and age should be dying hungry or thirsty in hospital, regardless of the circumstances.

But this is precisely what LCP protocols impose…

It is a fine line to draw between the culture of ‘non-intervention’ and the culture of neglect.

Liverpool Care Pathway – And The Amis Cull

The foci and modus operandi of medicine were always life and the safeguarding of life. Hence: the taking of the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.

It used to be that our medical people were trained to look for signs of life and to provide support and stimulus to preserve life; now, they are being trained to look for ‘signs’ of death – to ‘diagnose’ death - and to make responsive, even pre-emptive provision for indications, both those apparent and those projected, that will only serve to ensure a self-fulfilment of that ‘diagnosis’.

It is not scientifically possible to diagnose impending death as the LCP purports to do.  The LCP is instead an assessment of the perceived quality of life of the patient by the medical team and as such is euthanasia

Dr. Patrick Pullicino

Enter the LCP… 

A care tool originally designed for a hospice setting to recognise when that ‘point of no return’ has been reached in order to provide a merciful end to those already diagnosed as being terminally ill has been corrupted into becoming a tool to be used across the board to ‘determine’ death itself!

Martin Amis, Jacques Attali and Baroness Warnock amongst others are persons of note and prominence in their fields each of whom have expressed unacceptable and morally vile views in the respect of those considered worthy and unworthy of life.

Amis singles out the elderly in this respect.

A useful culling tool to this end, therefore, is become the LCP.

The outrageous and the morally unacceptable

Joseph Goebbels maintained that a lie retold often enough, no matter how outrageous, becomes believable - and believed.

The outrageous and the morally unacceptable, also, repeated often enough, become trivialised to the point of the mundane, almost tiresome by their very mention. Thus do they gain plausibility and acceptance - that, thereby, they may cease to appear so novel and extreme.

They slip 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.

Thus, what was unacceptable is become acceptable and normal. Moral.