Posted by
Catmman on Sunday, October 11, 2009 11:51:51 AM
An 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left
to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.
Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she
had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial
feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care
plan intended to ease the last days of dying patients.
Doctors say Fenton is an example of patients who have been condemned to death
on the Liverpool care pathway plan. They argue that while it is suitable for
patients who do have only days to live, it is being used more widely in the
NHS, denying treatment to elderly patients who are not dying.
Ball, 42, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be
left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for
legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”
Perhaps this is simply an isolated incident?
In a separate case, the family of an 87-year-old woman say the plan is being
used as a way of giving minimum care to dying patients.
Susan Budden, whose mother, Iris Griffin, from Norwich, died in a nursing home
in July 2008 from a brain tumour, said: “When she was started on the [plan]
her medication was withdrawn. As a result she became agitated and
distressed.
“It would appear that the [plan] is . . . used purely as a protocol which can
be ticked off to justify the management of a patient.”
Read the whole story.
But this would never happen here in the US if we nationalize medicine.
Nope.
It would never happen...