Posted on 07/02/2011 1:10:56 PM PDT by wagglebee
The so-called “duty to die” has been quietly discussed in bioethics for more than a decade. Now, a major British Medical Association leader proposed an implicit duty to die by stating that terminally ill people may have to be denied life-extending treatments due to the costs of their care. From the Scotsman story:
THE leader of Scotland’s doctors has questioned whether society can afford to pay thousands of pounds to keep terminally-ill people alive for weeks or months when health service budgets are under unprecedented strain. Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the British Medical Association Scotland, said in some cases tens of thousands of pounds were spent on drugs to extend cancer patients’ lives for relatively short periods.
Speaking ahead of his organisation’s annual meeting, the GP said the country had to debate the merits of these kinds of aggressive treatments and the effects they had on the NHS budget. But he stressed any decision had to be made at a society level, rather than being left to doctors.
He’s right about the last part. Doctors should not decide which patients live and which don’t live. But you have to ask yourselves what kind of a society would we become if we decided that when one needs care the most, it will be denied because of the cost (and, let’s face it, their lack of current productivity).
If we (this matter involves far more than the UK) are going to have a “conversation” about which treatments not to fund, I suggest we start with non elective procedures and treatments, i.e. those that are required to preserve life or treat serious illnesses and injuries. We should also reduce over utilization by requiring patients to pay deductibles and co-pays (via means testing). Better that people pay for part or more (depending on where you live) of your own care than throw the most sick and disabled among us out of the life boat. At the very least, those who need care most should not be the first ones denied it.
Let's get serious here and really do something about this issue. Money. It's the most important thing, isn't it? Well, other than Mother Earth.
This was advocated by CO Governor Lamm in the mid-1970s. Did Prescott Bush also take this line in the early 1950s?
I don’t think welfare slackers would be on the termination list but would be glorified as the very purpose of government.
*That'll* put an end to offshoring!
...or maybe not. Some of the most incomprehensible bloatware I've ever seen came from offshore.
But you raise a serious point. Who determines what is "useful" work, especially as the private sector gets crowded out and a labyrinthine order of "set asides" and other quotas reserves occupational lebensraum for members of preferred victim groups. To be laid off is to die.
...and we eagerly anticipate the lovely spectacle of slots being reserved for such vital things as Princeton University's The Cultural Production of Early Modern Women examines “prostitutes,” “cross-dressing,” and “same-sex eroticism” in 16th - and 17th - century England, France, Italy and Spain
Whether this will lead to a dystopia such as that in Canticle for Leibowitz, or merely the tragic death of an itinerant civilization due to the regrettable and unenlighted omission of telephone sanitizers, as related by Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy, is beyond me.
Cheers!
The socialists. Ya know, “our betters”
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How 'bout medical school part of the school system? Graduate high school at 26 yrs old.
Physician heal thyself.
Slippery slope.
Yep.
Some of us might not be willing to wait that long.
The whacky commies love to claim the value of all labor is equal. To that I suggest that we grab a janitor when any of those fools needs a heart surgeon, brain surgeon or other highly skilled professional. Let them live (or die) with the consequences of that belief.
Yep. It's a slippery slope. What will be the dividing line and who will make the decision? I can imagine them terminating global warming deniers for the greater good.
The “greater good” is what self appointed deity applies to others when placed in a position of power. The liberal flavor is particularly vicious. The current administration is an example.
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