Should the UK Outlaw its Most Inhumane forms of Euthanasia i.e. NHS Death by Dehydration?

There's a separate debate about whether euthanasia in Britain should be legal. However our most inhumane form (that of doctors deliberately dehydrating & then starving their own patients to death) is routine throughout Britain's NHS. This practice isn’t called that (of course!) nor is this called euthanasia (-as there’s nothing humane about it) instead it’s simply called The "Liverpool Care Pathway".

Thanks to one family recently defying doctor instructions (i.e. by giving their 82 year old Patricia Greenwood water) she is now due to go on a world cruise…

I survived the death pathway: Patricia, 82, was given two days to live, but her family defied doctors and gave her water through a straw - now she's planning a world cruise www.dailymail.co.uk... ning-world-cruise.html

Not surprising, given…

Patient death pathway 'based on guesswork’
The controversial “death pathway” has come under renewed attack from doctors, lawyers and campaigners who said staff using it had to guess when patients were nearing the end of life. www.telegraph.co.uk...

In addition Con-Dem's beloved Big Society –Government, is bribing NHS hospitals to kill their own patients

Hospitals bribed to put patients on pathway to death: Cash incentive for NHS trusts that meet targets on Liverpool Care Pathway
• Some hospitals set target of two thirds of all deaths should be on LCP
• At least £30m in extra money handed to hospitals to achieve these goals
• Critics warn financial incentives could influence the work of doctors
www.dailymail.co.uk... html

Hospitals 'paid millions to put patients on death pathway'

Hospitals are being paid millions of pounds to reach targets for the number of patients put on a controversial pathway for the withdrawal of life-saving treatment, according to data based on Freedom of Information requests.
www.telegraph.co.uk...

I wonder if this government allowed evil, will become more widespread as (thanks to the governments NHS Reform Bill) more & more private companies make a killing out of Britain’s NHS?

There is also plenty of accidental starving to death…
www.telegraph.co.uk...

This affects us all? Some day we will all die, and for 50% it will be in hospital www.nursingtimes.net... spital/5044720.article


My Questions Are…
1. Do you personally mind dying through starvation-dehydration?
2. Should it be legal for anybody, to ever cause somebody to die this way.
3. Why is the current "Care Pathway" not constitute, under English law "Gross Manslaughter"?

The only people I wish to die starving (preferably with water & hot food, right in front of them!) is our legislators who allow these NHS practices to take place. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Cameron & Clegg could all stop this evil practice if they wanted to.
I support Euthanasia (have done for to pets, so why not ourselves?) however I want this form of euthanasia-manslaughter forever criminalized.

Blame the Catholic Church?
The evil (so called Catholic "Church") favor's something no God ever found time to even put in the Bible. It's called Natural Law. I'm linking to this Natural Law article about Abortion as the principle concerning euthanasia is exactly the same www.newadvent.org... i.e. death by natural causes (like starvation?) = Holy, death by injection = Satan -on bad terms with the pope (which is probably good!)
So could the U.K's weird way of killing sick people (without their consent, which is therefore actually all too like murder) basically be a weird religious practice, of not upsetting the Church's "holy" men?

My aging mother died that way 10 years ago. We had no idea until a retired nurse asked us whether she was being given food and water, we said no (the hospital told us she was unable to eat or drink). She then asked whether she was on a drip, and we realised she wasnt. The nurse told us a drip should have been set up the moment they knew she could not drink, she then told us WHY the drip wasnt set up.

I never realised this was still happening, surely this is murder?

Letting the old and feeble--who have no hope of recovery--die is not too far out there. In fact, there
is a market for it...else we wouldn't have Dr. Kervorkian....

But when an illness is treated as easily as "Here, have some water"...then that's just murder.
No other way to look at it...Food and water are not "treatments' for an illness...they are requirements
FOR LIFE!

I would love to see someone with a background and credibility in medical matters lay out, in graphic detail, what a human being experiences and how the stages progress for death by dehydration. I'm not any such expert, by any stretch. I've only been through some classes on desert climate survival. That phase of the class was disturbing beyond description for imagining as a true path to endure before dying. While I cannot, under any circumstances commit suicide for reasons of personal Belief, I decided then that if faced with that....I'd damn sure get downright careless..and if I happened to slip off a cliff or get eaten first, I'd have gotten a good deal as the last deal to see.

I can't believe the good people of the United Kingdom would tolerate this being done to a single person by choice if they saw and understood without sugar coating just what horror this manner of death IS to the person going out that way.

Good God...The body is resilient..it does anything to live...and THAT process...in THIS condition...is truly horrific to imagine feeling happen as it's happening.

Wrabbit2000 I don’t think most people are aware this is happening. It’s occasionally in our papers, but our sheeple seem to have such short memories –even though half of us will die in hospital -and so quite possibly this way.

Quite frankly I (personally) wouldn’t have any problem subjecting anyone involved in this to Retrospective Justice. Sure they reckon it’s legal, but hay the Nazies believed that too when they built Auschwitz, did that spare them? Should it have?

Murdering an old person who’s never done anything to you (apart from quite possibly defend this countries freedom) is just evil.
Concealing from the families what is happening to their relatives (like VoidHawk, is the biggest act of murder of them all, as it’s one thing to have to do what another tells you to do (like Shindler), another to obedientlygo along with it –like the 99%.

The U.S system is only a fraction of the NHS’s cost-effectiveness www.guardian.co.uk... but at least they’d never murder you when there’s so much more money to be made in keeping you alive! (Mind you, that can be another version of inhumane treatment!) but private companies working for the UK government will. Besides it’s irrelevant who’s doing it, just so long as it’s stopped ASP. Remember this thread.

reply to post by Liberal1984

I think you've put together a great thread here and it's highlighting an issue I certainly never knew was happening. I can easily believe the people over there are unaware as well. The bland and downright boring name you show they use makes it sound like anything but what your describing it as. Oh, how many 'innocent' sounding things in my own country are similarly...ANYTHING but the boring or bland they sound like. It's a great way to hide terrible things in plain sight, that's for sure.

(facepalm....on my own nation)

I can't help that, I had to. How can I not? I'm sure when/if we transition to a system where there is no profit involved and actually more trouble to maintain our Elderly, we'll see it turn the direction yours has. I just can't help but sigh when the best argument for us NOT killing people is that the US is entirely too busy robbing them to death.

You know, I don't even recall where I heard it now but it was in some philosophy reference. The sentiment was a simple one though. Societies can be best judged for their value by the way they treat the very young and the very old. Well... Hell... What does that say about all of us? I'd guess we've failed that test on both sides of the Atlantic.

Problem stems from the medical profession assuming we are all thick, and their assumption that they are the only ones with the knowledge of imminent death. The sheer amount of people coming forward now to tell their own experiences is growing by the day. I highly doubt any investigation will acheive anything other than a name change for this barbaric practice. The whole thing is sobering for anyone who has elderly reletives and a downright terrifying vision of the future.

You can't walk into the doctors these days without them asking you whats wrong with you first and googling it next. How in hell are you supposed to trust them to know exactly when you are about to curl your toes up?

reply to post by Liberal1984


I kind of disagree with you to be honest. I actually think most people are aware of this - at the end of the day, if you go into a hospital, you see this kind of thing regularly.

I actually think people react to it in the way that people do when they see something that they can't comprehend - they blank it. I don't know if that makes it better or worse but it would be my take.

I am sure that in certain circumstances, this is genuinely a viable option for some patients, although it would be better in a more humane manner. For example, in some patients, it may be possible to cause death by dehydration whilst they are sleeping (therefore minimising any potential suffering). However, to have it as a blanket policy seems absurd.

At then end of the day, medical cases are individual rather than uniform.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
You know, I don't even recall where I heard it now but it was in some philosophy reference. The sentiment was a simple one though. Societies can be best judged for their value by the way they treat the very young and the very old. Well... Hell... What does that say about all of us? I'd guess we've failed that test on both sides of the Atlantic.

edit on 31-10-2012 by Wrabbit2000 because: (no reason given)

I totally agree with this sentiment. On the same theme, a few years ago i was watching a Donal Macintyre programme about tribes in Papua new Guinea. He went to stay with them and live as they do. He then had them over to stay with him. During the stay with him, he took them to visit his mother in a care home. The looks of horror on the faces of the Papuans was actually quite shocking. They simply couldn't believe that we treated our elderly in such a way and were totally appalled.

reply to post by Liberal1984


My husband and I are in the U.S.after the Terri Schiavo case,my
husband and I got power of attorney over each other.I will be on
guard now if my husband is not receiving a drip while in the hospital.
Trust me,I will ask questions and I will expect an answer to them!

reply to post by VoidHawk


you bet it is, and they make money ta boot, also after some are dead, check to see if missing any body parts"in the name of science of course". big market for body parts.

reply to post by Flavian


It's really not a viable option for anyone to die this way. Do you really believe that someone who's sleeping or sedated wouldn't suffer just as much from death by dehydration? I wouldn't even do this to someone in a coma.

Withdrawing fluids from someone who is in your care and totally helpless is euthanasia, just as surely as injecting them with a drug to end their life. The only difference is that it is slow and protracted euthanasia, rather than swift and painless. I think this practice lets those in charge feel that death was by "natural causes", so they don't feel responsible for ending the patients life. Of course dying of thirst is not death by natural causes, and the patient probably suffers a lingering and unpleasant death.

reply to post by Liberal1984


Good question, better yet, should the U.K. outlaw all forced euthanasia?
I'm not against people who are near death from fatal injuries/illnesses making the decision to end their own lives in a safe medical environment, but just euthanizing people without their or their families permission/consent is wrong on so many levels.

reply to post by Liberal1984

Murdering an old person who’s never done anything to you (apart from quite possibly defend this countries freedom) is just evil.

As I said to you on your other thread about this exact same topic,

as someone who cares for dying people using the LCP, I find your posts offensive and you really are in no position to judge, you have no idea the emotional toll it can take on us in health care. So unless you are using this care plan on a daily basis and actually know what you are talking about please do me and my colleagues a favour, shut up and let us get on with doing our jobs, saving lives and caring for those we can’t save.

You have no idea what the LCP involves how it’s used and how care is justified so please stop judging us when you don’t have the first idea about the basics of palliative care, its upsetting.

You are a group law onto yourselves –i.e. is external opinion from your hospital-workplace so involved, it can’t happen without it?

And apparently NHS staff are an over-worked profession? If so specialist units should be making euthanasia decisions.

I’m not surprise killing people takes an emotional toll, but perhaps you wouldn’t be having such guilty consciences, if you sincerely knew everyone you saw on the LCP had consented to it?

Because anybody on the LCP who did not consent to it (but was left without food-water anyway) was murdered –there’s no two ways about it.

reply to post by Liberal1984



The Liverpool Care Pathway is NOT a Euthanasia protocol it is a care evidence based care plan used all over the UK to deliver the most comfortable and dignified death to the dying individual.

Sometimes withholding food is the best way forward because dying form a aspirative pneumonia is not pleasant, giving IV fluids can cause fluid overload and kill a patient you may be trying to save, the LCP does not mean that we stop trying to save the individual in some cases.

You don’t know the first thing about this pathway or caring for the dying patient so please just stop.

The following article Here was very well written, researched and conclusive on the topic.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


I may be wrong but i think all he is saying is it needs to be revised,and putting it quite well.Considering your a medical profesional i find telling someone in a discussion to 'shut up' is possibly too defensive.No doubt you do your job well and you also seem to know what your talking about.However in an overpopulated country there are always abuses of the system and if something needs to be revised,to stop said abuses esp euthanasia/murder whatever, then a logical step would be to to have it revised surely...it would appear it's not being used in some cases as intended...

This kind of stuff is happening in the United States as well. Just go to any nursing home and see some of the elderly people there all skin and bones and just lying in bed with their mouths open. God forbid if you should give them something to drink or eat. They tell you not to do that because they ( the person lying in bed) don't feel anything and that this is the way the dying process is. Just don't feed them. Even tho this happened to my aunt and of course she wasn't in her right mind still doesn't make it right to let them stop giving them food or drink.
The same think happened to my brother only last year and this is because he was suffering with lymph node cancer they stopped giving him food or drink. I have to take him him after one week in hospice care because he wasn't dying fast enough. I took him home and after two day I couldn't take care of him any longer (which I kick myself to this day for it) so they put him in the nursing home and he lasted another 3 days because he died. I cannot tell you how much I have suffered afterwards to this day and it will be one year. Yes, I believe truly that they are killing people for some reason or another. I hope no one else has to go through this . Its really a shame. Really.