Taking up the gaunlet thrown down by Counting Cats..., here's my take on the euthanasia report from last week:
A high proportion of deaths classed as euthanasia in Belgium involved patients who did not ask for their lives to be ended, a study found.And why are these admissions not made in the dock, following the words ‘I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and…’?
More than 100 nurses admitted to researchers that they had taken part in 'terminations without request or consent'.
The disturbing revelation - which shows that nurses regularly go well beyond their legal role - raises fears that were assisted suicides allowed in Britain, they could never be properly regulated.The ‘slippery slope’ argument.
Which, given what we know of the attitudes of some NHS nurses already, is a fair point.
And it may be worse than first thought. These ones admitting it might just be the blasé and the dim:
It is likely many nurses ' under-reported' their involvement for fear of admitting an illegal activity, the study said.Yeah. Think on that for a while. ‘No explicit request’…
But it added that many were probably acting according to their patients' wishes, 'even if there was no explicit request'.
In other words, ‘they were asking for it, really’…
Last night, Dr Peter Saunders, director of the Care Not Killing campaign in Britain, said: 'We should take a warning from this that wherever you draw the line, people will go up to it and beyond it.'Which doesn’t mean, as he clearly wishes, that we should throw the idea out. But we need to bbe very, very careful about how we go about it…
'Once you have legalised voluntary euthanasia, involuntary euthanasia will inevitably follow,' he added.
But pro -euthanasia group Dignity in Dying said rules that see the patient taking their own life, rather than a doctor administering the drugs, could still work.Only for those physically able to do so.
Update: Over at Angry Exile's blog, a detailed breakdown of the flaws in that report. Makes interesting reading.
4 comments:
I see this from a different angle. Wouldn't legal voluntary euthenasia require to have a stream of paperwork and therefore more nurses would be willing to document their 'treatments'?
As it stands the nurses can do what they want without any supervision of their record keeping.
Just a thought.
"And it may be worse than first thought......"
Ah, sagacious words of caution normally reserved for Banking crises, nuclear power plant leaks and Greek budget deficits.
"Wouldn't legal voluntary euthenasia require to have a stream of paperwork and therefore more nurses would be willing to document their 'treatments'?"
Oh, that's a given. That might well have prevented abuses like the recent one.
Unfortunately my comment was too long for Blogger so my thoughts are over at mine, but if you want the the short version I feel the Fail are pedalling alarmist bullshit.
I know. I was shocked too. ;-)
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