Liverpool Care Pathway: A National Scandal: 2016

Thursday, 21 July 2016

Liverpool Care Pathway - The End

In the beginning was the end and in the end is the shape of things to come.

The forces, routed, have reformed their regiments and renewed the Long March to 2020.

Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury, 1953)

“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy."

- Fire Chief, Beatty

Revisionist History:

"Established 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin."

- Fireman’s Rulebook

"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"

He laughed. "That's against the law!"

"Oh. Of course.”

"You're not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You're one of the few who put up with me. That's why I think it's so strange you're a fireman. It just doesn't seem right for you, somehow.'"

"I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly. If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles per hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too?"

They crashed the front door and grabbed at a woman, though she was not running, she was not trying to escape. She was only standing, weaving from side to side, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head. Her tongue was moving in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something, and then they remembered and her tongue moved again: "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out."

How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim's mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren't hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn't be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don't scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who's got a match?

Fahrenheit 452 (Reality Check, 2016)

"The Constitution, as a charter of negative liberties, says what the States can't do to you, says what the Federal Government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the Federal Government or the State Government must do on your behalf."

- Commander in Chief, Obama

Revisionist History:

NHS England's first strategy for end of life care in England, published in 2008, has succeeded in reversing the trend of increasing the proportion of deaths taking place in hospital.

- Transforming end of life care in acute hospitals - 'How to' guide

- Express

The LCP Review itself stated: “There are no precise ways of telling accurately when a patient is in the last days of life.”

DNR also provides a moral dilemma. A passive decision to not intervene to save a life is tantamount, morally, to an active decision to take a life.

They are being sent home to die...

The final word must go to the Archdeacons of the Pathway, Chairman Ellershaw et al –

“It might strike lay people as odd, but there is little empirical data on the physician skill of diagnosing imminent death. It would appear that much remains to be learned.” There is limited evidence in medical literature of how the dying phase can be identified.
- Diagnosing Dying

That said and done, there are those who boldly go where none have gone before:

The Mail

Priority assessments and downgraded responses.

The paramedic took a quick look.

GSF Barton Method assessment made, the paramedic follows the Lakhani Recommendations and goes on standby.

Further reading -

Liverpool Care Pathway - On The Final Stretch

- Mail Online

Ambulance crews responding to 999 calls are being alerted if a patient is on a list, and can refuse to take them to hospital if they have previously expressed a wish to die at home.

Further reading -

Liverpool Care Pathway - Second Class Delivery

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Terminator

We care. We can help you end your life. In Ontario, doctors are being invited to register their interest in providing assistance to die.

Federal legislation, passed on June 17, 2016 has amended the Criminal Code to permit the taking of life.

Active killing is become a medical therapy.

Doctors and nurse practitioners in Ontario can now provide medical assistance in dying. There is even a referral service available should there not be a doctor or nurse practitioner available to provide treatment.

Your treatment is your right. You may not be abandoned.

And when the swing is complete, it will have gone full circle:

GPs have been dropped between a legal rock and a hard place. While the Data Protection Act demands that personal data is handled transparently and held in confidence, the Health and Social Care Act has stated that GPs are legally required to provide data to the Health and Social Care Information Centre for the Care.data programme with presumed consent.

Presumed consent is the positive rights and negative liberties model. It is the 'deemed consent' model adopted for organ donation in Wales.

Care.data pseudonymised and anonymised personal data. Even so...

For purposes of demonstrating to Commissioners 'value for money', we are required to pseudonymise and anonymise clients data online using reference numbers instead of names. The reference numbers consist of the Scheme identifier and the tenancy identifier. Effectively, anyone who is determined to discover the client’s identity may do so.

Care.data pseudonymised and anonymised personal data, likewise, has not been impregnable to anyone determined to source identity.

No more...

The NHS announced that the scheme to store all patient data on a single database would be cancelled following the publication of a long-awaited review from Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian (NDG).

In response, NHS England said: “In light of Dame Fiona’s recommendations, NHS England has taken the decision to close the care.data programme. However, the government and the health and care system remain absolutely committed to realising the benefits of sharing information, as an essential part of improving outcomes for patients.

“Therefore this work will now be taken forward by the National Information Board, in close collaboration with the primary care community, in order to retain public confidence and to drive better care for patients.”
- nhe

The NIB was set up to advise the Secretary of State for Health on the use of powers to set aside the common law duty of confidentiality in England where identifiable patient information is needed and where consent is not practicable.

NIB now works in collaboration with the DOH to digitalise the NHS and tweets as NIB @Health_2020.

The goal is a radical alliance of Health and Social Care to move forward the digital revolution regardless.

Whatever impediment there is placed in the path the pathway will be followed...

And they are all back where Wee Belong...

It is 'not new or additional guidance' for it is only what has gone before they once belonged.

"It builds on legacy work from NHS Improving Quality and provides practical advice and support for frontline clinicians and leaders on ‘how to’ identify, lead and implement change for themselves to improve their local services in collaboration with their local partner organisations across their community."

It is now 'personalised care' but it is the same graphics and annotations.

The same questions are asked, the same documents sourced -

- Route to Success How To Guide - December 2015

And are we come full circle -

Liverpool Care Pathway – "Six Steps To Success"

From the Fireman setting fires, to the Medics taking lives...

So, get back John, John, get back to where you Wee Belong!

Some final reading for the end -

Liverpool Care Pathway - And Who Is The Victim?

Liverpool Care Pathway - Be Not Disarmed By The Caring Smile

Liverpool Care Pathway - 111, EPaCCs And The 999 Downgrade

Liverpool Care Pathway - The LKP Can Deliver

Sunday, 19 June 2016

Liverpool Care Pathway - Bold As Brass And As Brazen

And when the swing is complete, it will have gone full circle...

This is Commissioning person centred end of life care –

This is all just overboard PC or sounds like it; this is all just puff ‘n stuff for a Mission Statement –

We have:

•Given due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination,
harassment and victimisation, to advance equality of
opportunity, and to foster good relations between people
who share a relevant protected characteristic (as cited
under the Equality Act 2010) and those who do not share
it; and

• Given regard to the need to reduce inequalities between
patients in access to, and outcomes from healthcare
services and to ensure services are provided in an
integrated way where this might reduce health
inequalities

•We have also given due regard to the responsibility that
CCGs have a duty to actively involve local people as
stated in the Health and Social Care Act [2006 amended],
2012 Health and Social Care Act (amending the NHS Act
2006) c. 7 PART 1 Further provision about clinical
commissioning groups Section 26 Section 14z(2)1,
Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality Act) 20152.

What is this? What has this got to do with health care? Sorry, I forgot. This is not health care; this is end of life care.

Meanwhile...

The revisionists are hard at work attempting to rehabilitate Joe Stalin. This is classic revisionism:

This is the Transforming end of life care in acute hospitals - 'How to' guide -

NHS England's first strategy for end of life care in England, published in 2008, has succeeded in reversing the trend of increasing the proportion of deaths taking place in hospital.

The EoLC Strategy actually produced the medical holocaust that was the LCP.

The EoLC strategy subsequent to the discrediting of the LCP has been to carry on as before but call it something else and, using EPaCCS, shunting the punters out the hospital back into the community and, better still, signed off onto an AD that keeps them in the community setting.

Here is NHS England with "Commissioning person centred end of life care – a toolkit for health and social care" -

Providing high quality end of life care that is truly centred around the needs of the individual and their loved ones is an important outcome to aim for. Given the complexity of ensuring all the patient’s needs are met, wherever possible, requires all the agencies to work together.

As Lenin might have asked: What is to be done?

What is all this obsession about ‘end of life’ care? What about just basic ‘care’?

Let’s look at that statement again with some basic amendments…

“Providing high quality ~~end of life~~ care that is truly centred around the needs of the individual and their loved ones is an important outcome to aim for. Given the complexity of ensuring all the patient’s needs are met, wherever possible, requires all the agencies to work together.”

THAT should be basic to ALL care. That should be at the heart of all care. So, why isn’t it?

And all that Mission Statement twaddle above…?

Of COURSE there is discrimination. Just ask the Cancer Drugs Fund why Ibrutinib was suddenly ‘disappeared’ off the NHS website last November/December!

Everyone must have fair and reasonable access to dying but not fair and reasonable access to living.

This is Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care -

The building blocks for achieving these ambitions:

Honest conversations

Person centred care

Helping to take control

Clear expectations

These may be ‘said and dones’ for all care. To single out ‘end of life’ is discriminatory. Determining ‘end of life’ and ‘diagnosing’ dying is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Ambition statements:

“I live in a society where I get good end of life care regardless of who I am, where I live or the circumstances of my life.”

“I live in a society where I get good ~~end of life~~ care regardless of who I am, where I live or the circumstances of my life.”

“I get the right help at the right time from the right people.”

“Wherever I am, health and care staff bring empathy, skills and expertise and give me competent, confident and compassionate care.”

These are musts for all care, not just EoL care. But it isn’t.

Forward Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care:

“Death and dying are inevitable. Palliative and end of life care must be a priority. The quality and accessibility for this care will affect all of us and it must be made consistently better for all of us. The needs of people of all ages who are living with dying, death and bereavement, their families, carers and communities must be addressed, taking into account their priorities, preferences and wishes.”

A New Perspective:

Death and dying are inevitable; therefore, care is always a priority. The quality and accessibility for this care will affect all of us and it must be made consistently better for all of us. In this world 'nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes' [Ben Franklin]. Everyone, of what any age, is living with dying, death and bereavement. Death does not differentiate; Death is the ultimate leveller. Therefore treasure life. Treasure the life we create in the womb. Treasure life until the end of life. Life is too readily snuffed out. Life is not too readily ‘reassembled’ [Johnny Five]. Life and concern for life is always paramount because life is precious and living matters.

There is a Foreword in the extended document -

The Foreword is signed off by –

Professor Bee Wee National Clinical Director for End of Life Care, NHS England
Dr Jane Collins Chief Executive, Marie Curie
John Powell Policy Lead for End of Life Care Association of Directors of Adult Social Services

The Wee Belong of the Leadership Alliance and her stiff unswerving advocacy of the LKP is well known to readers of these pages...

Liverpool Care Pathway - End Of Year Review Of Outcomes

Marie Curie launched and promoted the LKP via the DoH EoLC Strategy. Marie Curie's own Chairman Ellershaw, devised the LKP...

Liverpool Care Pathway - Cast Iron Protection

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Report

Marie Curie's new leader, also a staunch supporter of the LKP, has had mention -

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Trouble Bubble Shooter

John Powell has not had prior mention but the joining up of health and social care as cautioned by James Churchill some years ago has been discussed previously...

Liverpool Care Pathway - Crying Wolf

Liverpool Care Pathway - When The Funding Had To Stop

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Reaper At the Town Hall Door

The Health and Social Care Economy has arrived. Health is taking over social care, seamlessly, in a joint funding operation -

Liverpool Care Pathway - And Who Is The Victim?

The National Palliative and End of Life Care Partnership which publishes this document includes –

National Palliative Care Nurse Consultants Group

Readers of these pages will be acquainted with this group(s) and their lead, Margaret Kendall...

Liverpool Care Pathway - Of Deception And Infamy

Liverpool Care Pathway - Of Deception And Infamy (Part II)

Liverpool Care Pathway - Curiouser And Curiouser And Curiouser

Liverpool Care Pathway - Catch Up EoLC

And here they are again, bold as brass and as brazen.

Here is the Treatment Escalation Plans (TEP) from Royal Cornwall -

Review Date: 24 September 2015
Next Review: Aug 2016
Reviewed by: Jay Over - Resuscitation Officer

• A TEP must be completed if the answer to the life expectancy question “Would
you be surprised if this patient died within next 6-12 months? is no.
• A TEP must be completed for all patients who are at risk of deterioration/cardiac arrest.
• The responsibility for making treatment decisions including resuscitation rests with the consultant in charge of the patient’s care.
• In the absence of a consultant, other doctors with at least 3 or more years registration with the GMC (deputy) may make these decisions in urgent circumstances for adult patients only; CT1 and above. If there are any doubts about the right course of action, a consultant should always be contacted to discuss what to do.

An adult, over 18 years, with capacity can refuse treatment.
A patient cannot demand resuscitation which is not clinically indicated.

The Version 4 Decision Record contains the TEP -

The TEP document itself advises use of the GSF Barton Method as a prompt to enact the TEP.

Elsewhere, the document states:

1.3. Nevertheless, it is not an appropriate goal of medicine to prolong life at all costs with no regard to its quality or the burdens of treatment on the patient.

It may sound commendable to say, as this document does, that 'it is not an appropriate goal of medicine to prolong life at all costs with no regard to its quality or the burdens of treatment'.

However, a decision taken to not act to save a life is tantamount to a decision taken to take a life...

It is a cold and calculating judgement call over-riding the natural emotional response to plunge in and help -

Liverpool Care Pathway - On The Final Stretch

Liverpool Care Pathway - Life And Death Café

Liverpool Care Pathway - Doing The Addition

Wiltshire are also using TEPs -

Resource Pages on the Wiltshire website are using video presentations courtesy of South Devon TEP.

One of these is copyright 2012, the height of the LCP medical holocaust.

And it's business as usual...

“They (hospital staff) said they don’t really operate on people over 80-years-old.”
“They said ‘do you want to put him through that’. We said he has no chance of life without it.”
- Alison Turner

Liverpool Care Pathway - After The Review, After Everything, They're STILL Killing People

Over in the States, Affordable Care sounds like it means making care affordable; it doesn’t. It means what it means on this side of the pond; making care affordable for the provider, which means rationing care.

Rationing care means downsizing treatment expectations.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes [Ben Franklin].

The circle is come full circle...

- The Mail

and complete...

Liverpool Care Pathway - Whether Shove Comes To Shovel, It's Still A Spade

But one last final thought to leave you with -

Liverpool Care Pathway - Advancing The Will To Live

Sunday, 22 May 2016

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Socio-Political Project

When the creep comes to slide, the swing is anyone's guess.

This is the RCM –

The RCM was established in 1881 as the Matron's Aid or Trained Midwives Registration Society, but has existed under its present name since 1947. In 1881, Vita Donum Dei was the College's slogan, which meant ''Life is the gift of God''. This was an old hymn that midwives used to sing.

The Chief Executive is:

Responsible for the day-to-day running and management of the RCM, the chief executive works with the executive management team to carry out the tactical operations of the organisation working towards the RCM strategic objectives. Cathy Warwick is the current chief executive.

If ‘life is the gift of God’, the taking of life is not something to be entered into lightly.

If God does not enter into your philosophy, still, life is precious and the moral compass becomes the more steadfast and demanding. The religious establishment warned that the godless were without any moral restraint.

The great challenge of Darwinism and the rise of Atheism in the 19^th Century asserted that removal of the Divine from the equation impelled moral judgement to be the more forthright and certain. A Deity is not necessary to ensure rightness of conduct.

Doctrinaire science, the Left and the new atheism were inseparable. The political actor would tread the boards with a pocket watch in hand to challenge God, if there be one, to strike him dead in 30 seconds. The crowd would stand in thrall to watch the inevitable.

The seconds ticked by and, marvel upon marvel, the human David was not struck dead and the divine Goliath made not an appearance to accept the challenge.

Owen, the founder of the Natural History Museum, did not disagree with evolution; Owen could not reconcile the removal of the Divine fingerprint that Darwinism demanded. His statue stood in the hall on the landing of the grand staircase of the great institution his efforts had founded until 2009. It was replaced with the statue of Darwin.

It has been asserted in these pages that it is not a matter of Right and Left but of right and wrong. Likewise, belief or non-belief - or disbelief - in a Supreme Being has no bearing on our actions and our moral comportment.

Whether religious or areligious; it is always correctitude which impels us and correctitude which haunts us.

A fellow student at Secondary School ever maintained that his upbringing had been all the more strict exactly because his parents were Atheists. Their Atheism demanded a moral independence from Divine intervention that had to be demonstrated and reflected in their child's comportment of himself.

A religious perspective does not necessarily command moral rectitude as may be readily demonstrated by the actions of some members of the Roman Catholic priesthood on one hand and by Islamic Fascists on the other.

This is the Daily Mail -

Midwives assist new life into the world, protecting the unborn and the mother, the bearer of the unborn. They are there to nurture and to heal, not to kill. That is the task of the Facilitator or Executioner.

It is improvident and incongruous somehow; it is unfitting, surely, that Cathy Warwick should also chair the UK’s biggest abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).

Question: In a democracy, does not the tail wag the dog?

Answer: The Chief Executive has made an executive strategic decision over the heads of the membership because that, according to the RCM, is her function.

BPAS receives £25 million of public money to carry out 63,000 terminations a year on behalf of the NHS. Ann Furedi is its £145,000-a-year Chief Executive. As with euthanasia at the other end of the age spectrum, killing is lucrative and rewarding.

Her other half, Frank Furedi, revived a revamped RCP in 1978. It was distinguished from its first incarnation by its opposition to state intervention in social and economic life.

That husband Frank was a 'founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party is mentioned in the short bio that accompanies wife Ann's picture. If that has any bearing or consequence on the story is not clear unless the Mail intends this information as if an additional slur to further emphasise and support the case for their argument, as if any were needed.

That is no more sensible than were the actions of the Loony Lefties from Rotherham Borough Council who snatched three children from their happy foster home solely on the grounds that the Foster Parents' UKIP affiliation was inappropriate and not compatible with having in their care children of ‘ethnic’ origin. Who, indeed, was the racist in that case?

That is no more sensible than were the actions of the Loony Lefties who found consort with intolerant Muslim activists to lay siege to the school where teacher, Ray Honeyford, taught to pillory him and parody his name: “Ray-cist, Ray-cist”.

To cite Frank himself:

Critical judgement of the views of groups that are culturally different from our own is to be avoided, because to be judged is to be damaged. Criticism is psychological violence. All groups in society (except of course one’s own) are to be recognised as “vulnerable”, that is, unable to stand up against the injury of having their views and their culture subject to critical scrutiny.
Mary Warnock – Review of 'Therapy Culture'

Who, indeed, was the racist in that case?

We are reaping today the results of that ignorance of the ignorant Left.

I used to have interesting discussions at our project with a visiting fire panel technician of 'ethnic' origin. I would share with him my own childhood experiences of his religion received through the filter of my father's eyes.

My father's time in North Africa during the war were a 'mind opener' for him. The locals he met gave him perspective and insight into their world view and their religion which he shared with his children. He would always say that he was 'C of E' but he would impart to us things like, "They believe in Jesus, too, but Muhammad as Prophet is greater" and "We all - Muslim, Christian and Jew - share the same God".

I would impart this to the visiting technician. He would respond, dogmatic and doctrinaire, inflexible and unwilling to depart from his position: "Of course, the problem that we Muslims have with Christianity is the Cross."

Ray Honeyford got it right.

Why the Mail should mention Ann Furedi's other half at all, apart from the RCP, is further substance that this is intended as a slur to support an argument by implication. It is not taken further nor elaborated upon.

There is a concern, however, that the reviewer quoted above, an admirer of Frank Furedi, is the Baroness Warnock who has discussed a 'duty to die'.

See, for instance, -

Liverpool Care Pathway - Dutch Style

Liverpool Care Pathway – An Innocuous Logic.

Glaring moral truth deteriorates into an intellectual debate on persons and potential persons, on non-persons and personhood. This has been reported in these pages and, therein lies substance for argument.

See, for instance, -

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Case For Brewer

Wife Ann states that abortion should be accepted "as an essential method of family planning". Therein lies substance for argument.

Herein lies substance for argument: Society, to function, has to have rules of engagement. If killing, the taking of human life, is wrong then by definition abortion is wrong. The way society has skirted round this issue is to redefine the point at which an unborn human child becomes human, or is even a person.

Wife Ann says ‘on abortion, we trust women’. The ‘We Trust Women’ campaign was launched in February. The campaign’s aim is to make abortion just another medical procedure.

Problem: Abortion is the taking of a person’s life (Sections 58 and 59 of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act).

Solution: Redefine the personhood status of the unborn infant.

The 1967 Abortion Act provided exemptions from prosecution to permit abortions to proceed. This was the year Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker made his landmark observations in Parliament...

Liverpool Care Pathway - The Werther Defectives

Liverpool Care Pathway - When The Caring Had To Stop

1967: Fifty years.

The social scientists float their ideas for maximum impact. It is done for reason and by design to permit debate to proceed. The campaign plans are unfolding. They wish to scrap the Abortion Act and redefine the status of the unborn infant. They wish to...?

Liverpool Care Pathway – A Moral Lassitude

In 2014, Giubilini and Minerva published their Defending after-birth abortion in response to critics –

As Helga Kuhse rightly points out, the aim of our article was not that of making an altogether original contribution to the discussion about the moral status of infants. Our intent was rather to draw some conclusions which, in our opinion, had not adequately been spelt out in the past, but which nonetheless seem to follow from what authors like Michael Tooley, Peter Singer, and Jeff McMahan had written. These authors have suggested that newborns do not have a ‘serious right to life’ for reasons related to newborns limited level of neuropsychological development. Our conclusion was that when it comes to striking a balance between the alleged moral status of newborns or their alleged right to life and the interests of existing people, the latter should prevail in the same sense and to the same extent as they are agreed to prevail in the case of abortion. As Kuhse rightly wrote, we took the discussion a step further in that we claimed that parents should be able ‘to seek the death of their healthy newborn infant’ if this significantly affects for the worse their well being or that of existing siblings.

In the case of CP v Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority in 2014, Lord Justices Dyson and Treacey and Lady Justice King ruled at the Royal Courts of Justice that a foetus is “not a ‘person’”; rather it is a 'sui generis organism'. Clearly, that decision precluded any possibility that, at any stage, was a human foetus considered a human being with the right to life.

The Left, traditionally, loves a cause: the defence of a persecuted minority it perceives to be in need of protection. Unborn children, because they are unable to help themselves, are surely a silent minority in need of legal protection.

In 2004, a woman's unborn child was ~~murdered~~ 'terminated' in a French hospital. This is BBC News –

A woman whose pregnancy was wrongly terminated in a French hospital has lost her fight at the European Court to enshrine a foetus' right to life.

Mrs Thi-Nho Vo went to the court after French courts said the doctor could not be prosecuted for homicide as the foetus did not have the right to life.

She said it had that right under the European Convention on Human Rights.

But the Court of Human Rights ruled against her, and involuntary abortion did not constitute manslaughter.

If unborn babes had rights, abortion would be murder.

Abortion, like euthanasia and the Liverpool Care Pathway, is a licence to kill.

Planning for a family is not shopping for children, returning to the store a delivery that was not ordered. A Child is not just a bi-product of sexual union. Just as the child must be taught responsibility, so the parent must take responsibility for the child.

Therein lies substance for argument. Whether religious or areligious; it is always correctitude which impels us and correctitude which haunts us.

Giving up a child, whether through abortion or adoption or surrogacy, cannot be an easy thing. The biological bond impels us and is, also, a source for correctitude.

The instinct to nurture is a drive that impels and which haunts the parent. It may be suppressed or become corrupted but it does not dissipate. The bond and bonding is, according to your belief, either Divine directive or what is coded into the gene to continue survival of the species.

It was not an easy thing for the 19 year old Kim West to give up her child for adoption just one week after he was born. It surely haunted her, such that, 30 years later, when that bond impelled her son to seek her out, she was impelled also to respond.

These days, pseudo-scientific psychologists have all sorts of fancy names for every manner of behaviour. It is lucrative and pays well. In this case, what is clearly the misdirected instinctual emotional bond between parent and child is called GSA (Genetic Sexual Attraction).

Parenthood is always the sum of two parts.

Roots are deep-rooted and written into our genes.They impelled author Alex Haley to write the story of his 'roots'. There is a need to know where we came from. Will 'roots' intrude upon the 'happy family' and impel the gamete or surrogate child to seek out the other part?

There is a hierarchy of influences at work that makes us what we are. There is nature which makes us; there is nurture which grounds us; there is culture which grooms us.

Wife, Ann, has pointed out that granting an abortion on the grounds of sex selection is not breaking the law.

Women give reasons why they want to end their pregnancies, and doctors sign a legal document to confirm that in their honest belief (‘good faith’) their patient meets the legal test – which is that continuation of the pregnancy would likely cause injury to the mental or physical health of the woman. - Spiked

Consideration that the intense cultural pressures on the woman may be immense and certainly such that they may very well give cause for concern for her continued mental and physical well-being may give grounds for agreeing to abortion.

There is a perverse parallel here in the innocuous logic of Baroness Warnock's 'Duty to die'...

Lady Warnock said: "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.

"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty to Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."

She went on: "If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die.

"I think that's the way the future will go, putting it rather brutally, you'd be licensing people to put others down."
- Telegraph

See also -

Liverpool Care Pathway – And The Shipman Psyche

Men and women are, or should be, social equals but, otherwise, they are not 'equal' but different. Difference does not make one better than the other; it just makes them different. It is that difference that has been lost in the feminist drive for equality.

In neglect of the fundamental difference which defines man and woman, Feminism has become a denial of the feminine.

Strength or aptitude is not what defines the difference.

Women can do most anything a man can do but a man cannot bear a child. With difference excluded from the equation, it may very well be that, as Margaret Thatcher said, when woman becomes man's equal she becomes his superior.

Obsession with defining 'equality' without including difference into the equation prejudices judgement. Failure or inability to acknowledge difference creates all manner of ills including Dawkins' determination to put Downs children down.

This is a scientifically-planned society and the social scientists are beavering away, moulding our lives in plain sight, and yet do we walk unaware, the fool on the hill, teetering on the edge of oblivion?

Like all sciences, social sciences evolve through the interplay of the ideas and theories of academics and the evidence that supports or refutes them.

Social scientists influence our lives usually without us being aware they are doing so.
- Economic and Social Research Council