British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life

World Net Daily reported on 25th April 2006:

“Andrea Clark is scheduled to be on the receiving end of a Texas Law [on “Futile Care”] that allows a hospital ethics committee to terminate care with 10 days notice, giving the patient’s family that length of time to find a different facility”. Andrea Clark, aged 54 was on a ventilator following bleeding in the brain. Although she could not speak, she could communicate with her family. Wesley Smith is quoted:

“Note that the treatment is apparently being removed because it works, not because it doesn’t – which means in effect, that the hospital ethics committee has declared the patient’s life to be futile.” The family wanted Clark to live. “Smith noted ‘It is as if Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers wanted Terri’s care continued but the hospital said no.”

“Smith described the Texas law as allowing ‘private decision making that will result in death without even the right for a public hearing, to cross examine witnesses or a formal appeal.’ Some have charged the law is meant to benefit insurance companies who want hospitals to get critical patients off the books’ Andrea Clark’s family could not in 10 days find another hospital willing to take her, so she died.

“Many people are not aware that the death with dignity movement came out of the managed health care movement perpetrated by the corporate insurance companies in the early 1990’s” (Lana Jacobs writing in Consistent Life News, USA, Fall 2005).

“The NHS End of Life Care Programme was set up to improve the quality of care for people at the end of life. In particular, it aims to help more people live and die in the place of their choice. It also aims to reduce the numbers of people in care homes being moved unnecessarily to hospital in the last weeks of their life.” (emphasis ours).

The National Council for Palliative Care is co-sponsor of this programme, announced in late July 2006, and no doubt it will help to improve the way dying people are treated in care homes. But already doctors resist pressure from relatives to refer elderly residents to hospital; families are told “she is too ill to be moved”, or “you wouldn’t want him to die in the ambulance, would you?” This can lead to a slow and unnecessary death, while families despair.

At the Maypole Nursing Home in Birmingham, now closed down, “bronchial pneumonia” was given as the primary cause of death in 80% of the deaths, BBC News reported on 21st August 2006. “A GMC hearing ruled there was no evidence to support this in the cases they examined…” Now the solicitor representing some of the families of residents who died is seeking a judicial review of the refusal of the Coroner, Mr Aidan Cotter, to hold inquests.

A murder suicide in Toronto by the elderly husband of a woman in the early stages of Alzheimer’s was reported as a ‘mercy’ killing. Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, wrote in the Globe and Mail on 30 August 2006:

“A study published in the March 2005 issue of the American Journal of Geriatic Psychiatry by Julie E Malphurs and Donna Cohen concluded: ‘In fact, the “mercy killing” perception is a myth. The husbands in such cases are often abusers and the wives are rarely compliant. In many such cases, defence wounds indicate that the wife fought for her life.”

“The authors of the study indicated that many of these terrible incidents could be avoided by providing good care to both the ailing spouse and the otherwise healthy spouse. Many ‘healthy’ spouses suffer depression and mental breakdown due to the demands and changes related to the care of an ailing partner”.

Note: In Britain, a study by SPAIN, a coalition of charities including Help the Aged and Age Concern, said the number of households receiving home care had fallen by a quarter since 1997. (Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2005).

To remind: Jane Campbell noted in an article in The Guardian on 9 May 2006 that Lord Joffe, as a member of the royal commission on long term care for the elderly, issued a minority report with one other member, saying that social care support should not be free at the point of delivery. This was acted on by the Government.

Commenting on the Law Commission’s report on the reform of the homicide law, the Medical Ethics Alliance said (20 December 2005):

“By making so called ‘mercy killings’ a lesser offence, a serious injustice could be done to those who are terminally ill, severely disabled or incompetent. The recommendations in the report that would open the way to an enhanced defence of provocation or ‘diminished responsibility’ could open the way to non custodial sentences being routine if the victim was ill, even if nowhere near death.”

Dr Steven White of Barnet, wrote to The Times on 5th July 2006 about facts which seem to have been too startling to evoke much reasoned response. He said….”Your report (June 30) that the Government is quietly trying to hand over effective control of the primary care trusts (PCTs) to international private health companies without discussion or parliamentary debate is chilling. Since PCTs control most of the NHS budget and commission care, the fate of every hospital in the country will pass into the hands of overseas private companies…..

Dr Stevens believes that by the time the devastating effects of this become evident to the general public, it will be far too late to reverse the process.

Nanny Valko reported from the USA on 15 April 2006 that a 2004 University study found patients in for profit hospices were half as likely to receive a full range of services, compared with those of non profits. “We believe not-for-profits, which receive approximately 15 per cent of their revenues from donations, will be forced to sell to efficient operators like Vitas (a unit of Chemed), CIBC Markets Analyst Michael Wiederhorn said in a recent report.”

In Britain “Services for elderly, disabled and mentally ill people are being slashed as councils bear the brunt of the NHS funding crisis, according to a survey published today, The Times noted on 16 March 2006. “The examination of 120 councils shows that social services are forcing a £1.76 billion shortfall, which represents 11.5 per cent of their vital budget.”

Dr Paul Longmore, a historian and scholar of disability sickness, was reported in the Los Angeles Daily News on 20 January 2006:

“Although they say they wouldn’t want to be kept alive by heroic means, when it comes down to it people want a lot more end-of-life care then the corporate managers and health care policymakers want them to have. Acceptance of the new culture of dying, which includes embrace of both public care policies and assisted suicide, has not proceeded as smoothly or rapidly as the reformers hoped.”

In an astonishing reversal of the trend towards Nazi medical ethics in Western countries, especially in British judge-made law, the new draft United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities reasserts the rights laid down in 1947: bodily integrity, freedom from forced sterilization and experimentation without informed consent, and the right to health care equivalent to that given to persons without disability, including food and fluid. It will reach the General Assembly in early December.

This time round, prospective victims have been warned, it seems.

Assisted Suicide Bills defeated in Vermont and California

On 3 May 06 the House Human Services Committee in Vermont’s legislative narrowly defeated H.B. 168, which was copied from Oregon’s assisted suicide law. On 27 June 06 the Judiciary Committee in California voted against AB651 a cleverly disguised version. “As was the case in Vermont, the defeat of AB651 was largely due to the work of a very broad-based coalition”. (Update, Year 2006, Vol. 20 No.4)

Death by Hansard ruled out

The South Australian premier has expunged from Hansard a speech by Sandra Kanck, the Democrats Leader, in which she outlined, in graphic detail, easy methods of suicide using household materials. A special resolution to omit it from the record was passed by parliament (4th September 2006).

Irish “Women’s Legal Defence Fund”

An advertisement in ALIVE September 2006, states “Informed consent is not obtained from women by abortion providers who deny women the evidence on known emotional and physical effects of induced abortion. (See www.afterabortion.org and www.abortionbreastcancer.com” It invites readers to contact the Women’s Legal Defence Fund, to try to obtain compensation for damage suffered.

RU486 not in demand in Australia

Six months after the Australian Senate voted to strip the Health Minister of the power to license the abortion-inducing drug RU486, supplies have not been ordered in, Right to Life Australia reports. Only one doctor is known to be using it.

European Court rules against three Irish women

Abortion advocates in Ireland have lost their case against the article of the Irish Constitution, which equates the life of the unborn to that of the pregnant woman (LifeNews.com, 7 July 06). The lawsuit was declared inadmissible on the grounds that the women should have appealed to Irish Courts first.

Embryos to die in Ireland

“A man has won the right to prevent his estranged wife using their frozen embryos to have another child.” Irish Independent, 19th July 2006.

Prevent Neural Tube Defects

“Thousands of unnecessary abortions have taken place in the past decade because the Government has failed to act on recommendations that foodshould be purified with folic acid, a major study says today “(Daily Telegraph, 30th January 2006).

“Britain lags behind other developed countries in the use of the acid to prevent neural tube defects such as spina bifida, says Professor Bernadette Modell, the British co-author of the report on the global toll of birth defects….Neural tube defects, at least 1.3 per 1,000 births, are more common in Britain than in countries of similar wealth.”

US Scientists back autism link to MMR

“The measles virus has been found in the guts of children with a form of autism, renewing fears over the safety of the MMR jab,” The Daily Telegraph reported on the 29 May 2006.

“American researchers have revealed that 85 per cent of samples taken from autistic children with bowel disorders contain the virus. The strain is the same as the one used in the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine.

“The study replicates findings made by the gastroenterologist Dr Andrew Wakefield in 1998 and Professor John O’Leary, a pathologist, in 2002.”

Australian sperm donors get right to contact offspring

“Hundreds of young Australians who were conceived with donor sperm but never told of their genetic heritage may soon receive a letter breaking the bombshell news of their conception” (Sunday Telegraph, 2 July 2006).

“An unparalleled and highly contentious legal provision makes the state of Victoria, in Southern Australia, the only place in the world where donors of sperm or eggs used in IVF have the right to seek out their biological offspring. Children may refuse contact but must be informed that a request has been made. A law passed in 1988 already allows children to seek contact with the strangers who helped create them” on reaching the age of 18.

Coroner reforms proposal “would not prevent another Shipman”

(The Times, 1 August 2006) “Ministers are also criticized in today’s report for abandoning earlier proposals to overhaul death certification”.

Palliative Care for the Terminally Ill Bill

Mr Jim Dobbin’s 10-minute-rule Bill is fifth on the list for Second Reading on 20th October.

Airbrushed obituary

The Times on 9th October paid a fitting tribute to Professor James Scott, the pioneering immunologist and obstetrician who refined the treatment for Rhesus immunization, lowering the rate of stillbirths. Curiously it omitted to mention tht he was a founder member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children and spoke at its first public meeting, reported prominently in The Times in 1967. He later helped organize a meeting in Leeds.

Recommended Reading:

PATIENTS IN DANGER: The Dark Side of Medical Ethics
Compiled and edited by Gillian Craig, published by Enterprise House. ISBN 978-0-9552840-0-7. Price £20.50 including postage. This book explores the use of tube feeding as a means of life support.

Terri’s Story: The Court-ordered Death of an American Woman
by Diana Lynne published by WND books. ISBN 158182 4882 Price £19.99 Postage extra. Bobby Schindler, Terri’s brother, says “It exposes everything that happened to Terri – how the hospice, the judge and the country officials were all connected”.

From Darwin to Hitler: Killing the Unfit
by Richard Weikart, published by Palgrave, ISBN 14039 7201X Price £14.99 The author gives incontrovertible evidence of the development of “eugenic” thinking, showing every link in the chain.