In October 2012, journalistic initiative elicited some horrific facts about what has come to be known in the UK as the Death Pathway (or Liverpool Care Pathway). Until then, many medical professionals had waxed lyrical about Britain’s sedation-dehydration regime. International conferences were run extolling the programme. Medical staff warmly congratulated one another on its use. It looked as though the Pathway was destined for global implementation. Although thousands of families had experienced enormous grief over its use, little attention was paid to them. Legal and medical professionals who warned that death cannot always be diagnosed with any certainty and that placing patients on the sedation-dehydration regimen could all too easily prove self-fulfilling were dismissed as crackpots. Indeed, I was among them. For years I had warned of the political, financial and medical interests that there are in institutionalising medical homicide whether by passive or active means.
Continue reading “Lethal Blindness”
Jurisprudence, Law and Ethics