28 June 2018

Patients starved to death

A version of this post was first published in 2007. It has been republished in the light of the Gosport hospital case.

In 1989, there was another life crisis when Marjorie’s mother, then in her 70s, had a series of increasingly severe strokes.
‘The hospital withdrew food and water and I watched her starve to death. My sister felt it was the kindest thing to do but my mother spent a week in agony. I felt utter grief and still haven’t dealt with it.’
(Daily Mail, 17 April 2007)

It is legal for an incapacitated patient to be denied artificial hydration and nutrition ... if doctors consider death to be in their best interest.
(Daily Mail, 19 April 2007)

It is legal, but it is still immoral (it is a strong violation of the basic moral principle*), for members of the medical Mafia to kill people by starving them to death. The assertion that it is legal is only making explicit the immorality which is already inherent in the medical profession, operating on the terms it does.

If an individual, or a relative or other person appointed by him, loses the right to decide for himself what is in his interests as he perceives them, the harm that may be inflicted upon him by the decisions made by the doctor to whom he has lost his autonomy, whether by accident or design, may clearly extend to extreme suffering or death.

* * * * *

Mr Cameron highlighted figures showing assaults on NHS staff running at 60,000 a year [...]
(from ‘Rudeness is just as bad as racism, says Cameron’, Daily Mail, 24 April 2007)

We are unfortunate enough to live in an age of legalised crime. State education and state medicine should be regarded as criminal.

Agents of the collective, such as teachers and doctors, are at risk from the resentment of their victims, who do not realise how thoroughly justified their resentment is.

In fact the victims should be opposing the principles of social oppression, not indulging in violence, which is seen as an excuse for even more oppressive incursions on individual liberty.

But the victims have been trained to believe that they would be losing free goodies described as ‘education’ and ‘health care’ (which have been paid for with money taken away from other people), so that they are ‘better off’ hanging on to these ostensible handouts, even with the great penalties which are attached to them.

* Basic moral principle: It is immoral to impose your interpretations and evaluations on anyone else.