In Britain, if you are old and infirm (or even young and very sick), you might get to visit the Liverpool Care Pathway -- on which you get sedatives and no life-sustaining care, including no food and fluids. While the son in this case says his parents were treated like dogs -- really they were not. Pets are euthanized -- but Britain subjects the people it puts on the Pathway to a tortuous death by dehydration. As I understand it, the decision to put someone on the Pathway can be made by the attending physician.

I have been collecting Daily Mail articles about the Pathway for a few months. There have been reports of families taking people out of the medical care facility that wanted use the Pathway, and the patient recovered.

Is this what we have to (not) look forward to under the latest version of our medical care system?

'They were treated like dogs waiting to be put down': Son of couple put on 'death pathway' blasts care home's decision to withdraw treatment

A war veteran and his wife died within days of each other after being put on the Liverpool Care Pathway without consent.

Charles Futcher, 90, who fought in the battle of El Alamein, died alone in a care home after he was put on the controversial end-of-life process.

Ten days later his wife Hilda, 89, died in the same home after she too was given sedatives and had vital food and fluids withdrawn under pathway procedures.


Their son, Charlie, said his parents had been treated ‘like animals who needed to be put down’ by doctors who ‘seemed to take it upon themselves to get rid of them’.

The 62-year-old, who was at his mother’s side when she died, said the couple’s treatment had been grotesque and claimed they were put on the pathway without consultation.

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The Liverpool Care Pathway is designed to ease the suffering of terminally ill patients in their final hours and can involve the withdrawal of foods and fluids as well as the use of sedatives such as morphine.

Yesterday the Mail revealed that up to 60,000 patients die on the pathway each year without giving their consent.

Yet Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has described the pathway as ‘a fantastic step forward’ – and dismissed concerns as based on matters ‘going wrong in one or two cases’.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2GhoQyIn9
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