High quality care provision is what is needed – not killing vulnerable patients
A letter from James Hardy:
A recent issue of the News Letter (November 19) reminded me how this paper punches far above its weight on diverse topics.
The front headline – 'Farmers are angry and we feel cheated' – drew attention to the threat to farming from inheritance tax changes.
Farmers face a double problem: hard physical work with risk of injury, plus the stress of running a business. Many years ago, during a holiday time, I milked cows for my Uncle Bob outside Cookstown, after he had sustained a fracture. It was a huge pleasure to get back to the relative ease of NHS general practice work!
The other article of interest in that edition of the News Letter was by Esmond Bernie ('Dangerous to justify euthanasia in terms of economic efficiency').
He rightly laments the outcomes from MAID (Medically Assisted Dying) in Canada and other jurisdictions. There probably was a time, even in the not too distant past, when the frail elderly were resuscitated inappropriately. But modern medicine has become far more honest about personal and family decision making (client autonomy). The NHS is now far less likely to strive officiously to keep people alive when they have a lamentably poor chance of recovery as a result of age-frailty.
It is surely sad to reflect on how so much inner city psychiatry time is presently spent dealing with the tragedy of self-harm, yet our crazed politicians across the Western nations press for MAID. Dutch experience of MAID features on a blog on TheWeeFlea.com (November 19): a sobering report by a leading Presbyterian media commentator.
I once had some sympathy with the potential merits of MAID. But a 12-month stint working in a West of Ireland Hospice under a leading Irish palliative care specialist radically changed my perspective. We need to invest in high quality palliative care provision, not killing vulnerable patients.
James Hardy, Belfast BT5