Liverpool Care Pathway
I'd never heard of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) until I read this.
The author of that blog post says 'euthanasia is voluntary' which, in the UK now, it isn't. It's illegal. So what doctors do sometimes is to find ways to cheat the system. I've worked alongside paediatricians who withdrew feeding from the most disabled of the babies on their wards. My OH tells of her late BiL who had terminal cancer and who was given a morphine drip with a button to press whenever he wanted more of the drug. That is, he was given the opportunity to kill himself and he took it.
As you know I'm pro-choice about death. I don't know whether the LCP frees people from lives they want to end. But my first feeling when seeing that blog post was a feeling of relief. Just as I feel about the Little Blue House in Zurich where Dignitas kills people who want to die. I'm not suicidal and I don't have mental illness. But I do want the option of dying one day, if and when my disability becomes unbearable. If I could die by going to Liverpool instead of to Zurich, I'd like that. Better still if I could die right here in my home. *With appropriate safeguards against abuse.*
The author of that blog post says 'euthanasia is voluntary' which, in the UK now, it isn't. It's illegal. So what doctors do sometimes is to find ways to cheat the system. I've worked alongside paediatricians who withdrew feeding from the most disabled of the babies on their wards. My OH tells of her late BiL who had terminal cancer and who was given a morphine drip with a button to press whenever he wanted more of the drug. That is, he was given the opportunity to kill himself and he took it.
As you know I'm pro-choice about death. I don't know whether the LCP frees people from lives they want to end. But my first feeling when seeing that blog post was a feeling of relief. Just as I feel about the Little Blue House in Zurich where Dignitas kills people who want to die. I'm not suicidal and I don't have mental illness. But I do want the option of dying one day, if and when my disability becomes unbearable. If I could die by going to Liverpool instead of to Zurich, I'd like that. Better still if I could die right here in my home. *With appropriate safeguards against abuse.*