We must stay alert to the reality that human life–all human life–is sacred; humans alone are created in the image of God. After the Terri Schiavo debacle, we must be ever more diligent to protect human beings who are handicapped, elderly, and diseased. Particularly, the future of healthcare appears to be pointing toward more government intervention. More government intervention will mean a rationing of healthcare. The first to be rationed out will be the elderly and the handicapped.
Once again, we don’t need to use scare-mongering to make the point. The UK healthcare system makes the point for us. The situation there is such that a remedy arose to “care” for the “dying.” We used to sing, “Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying.” But I don’t think the Liverpool Care Pathway is what was meant. The Liverpool Care Pathway is supposed to provide care for the terminally ill. Instead, it appears to have provided death for a man who was simply ill.
Wesley J. Smith has the story at First Things. With healthcare reform on the horizon in America, we can’t afford to get lazy or sleepy–or sick. Here is an excerpt from the story:
A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial ‘death pathway’. Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year-old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water and medication except painkillers. He died within two weeks. But tests after his death found that his cancer had not come back, and he was in fact suffering from pneumonia brought on by a chest infection. To his family’s horror, they were told he could have recovered if he’d been given the correct treatment.
Today, after being given an £18,000 pay-out over her ordeal, his widow Pat branded his treatment ‘barbaric’ and accused the doctors of manslaughter.
Gregory C. Cochran 