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

The Patients' Protection Bill sponsored in the House of Lords by Baroness Knight of Collingtree, DBE and supported by QCs Lord Carlile and Lord Brennan, has been blacked out by the media, with the honourable exception of the British Medical Journal. The Bill's Third Reading debate will be on 12th September. The Bill seeks to prevent withdrawal or withholding of tube feeding or hydration from patients if this is done with the object of causing death (as with Tony Bland).

Mrs. Joan Atkinson, who told the story of her mother's death on 11 Feb 03 in a BBC radio "File on Four" programme about deliberate dehydration of patients and inappropriate drug dosage, provided peers speaking in the debate with a report which had just then been headlined in her local paper, the East Anglian Daily Press (6 March 2003).

"A shepherd has been sentenced to six months in prison for what trading standards officials have described as the worst ever case of animal neglect in Suffolk........." He "caused unnecessary suffering to dozens of sheep on his land by not providing enough water, food and shelter......"

Government hostility to the Knight Bill, which would frustrate the main purpose of its own Mental Incapacity Bill, has been expressed through innocent allies such as Hospice doctors who have no experience of causing death and cannot believe it happens. Refusal to face facts, and acceptance of official euphemisms, can cost a very large number of lives.

The machinery has been set up, as at Wannsee in 1942 with "Evacuation to the East" : Court decisions, BMA and GMC guidelines, courses for nurses. It will need a very determined effort to throw a spanner in the works. For a start, letters should be written to the Press in support of the Patients' Protection Bill. Letters explaining what the MIB would actually mean are much needed also. SPUC has produced a good briefing. People First, which acts as an advocate for people with learning difficulties. has issued a postcard for M.P.s protesting against the Bill.