I have seen wildly varied reports on Leslie Burke in the UK. Is he safe or is he in danger now or if he loses his ability to communicate??? Do you know the latest?
This just came out this evening. Remind me not to be in the UK when I am in real bad health. Looks like the doctors can dehydrate someone to death really easily now.
It is unnerving anyway, but they portray the dehydration process as being just hunky dory, no big deal, patient hardly aware, etc. Yeah, rightttt.
Red Nova News
8mm
Dying Patient Loses His 'Right to Food' Battle ; Doctors Must Be Allowed to Make Final Decision, Say Appeal Judges
A TERMINALLY ill man yesterday lost his legal battle to stop doctors withdrawing food and water when his illness reaches its final stages.
Leslie Burke, 45, now fears he will suffer death by starvation or dehydration after he loses the power to communicate.
The Appeal Court ruling could have implications for thousands of patients each year who are unable to tell doctors they want life- prolonging treatment.
Campaigners for the 'right to food' say it allows doctors to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration once a patient can no longer express his or her wishes.
It is feared that those with conditions such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and muscular dystrophy may be affected as they could lose the power of speech or suffer deteriorating mental faculties.
Mr Burke, a former postman who has a degenerative brain condition, secured a landmark High Court ruling last year to stop doctors taking away nutrition in the final stages of illness. But the General Medical Council yesterday won an appeal against the verdict after saying it put its members in 'an impossibly difficult position'.
Philip Havers QC, for the doctors' body, said it would have obliged them to provide treatment even if they thought it was useless or possibly even harmful.
A panel of three judges headed by Lord Phillips, Master of the Rolls, defended the right of competent patients to demand artificial feeding.
But the same protection will not be guaranteed for those who cannot tell the doctor they want to be fed. Mr Burke, of Lancaster, knows his illness will cause him to one day lose the power of speech and control of his limbs.
He now fears taking two to three weeks to die of starvation or thirst.
He said last night: 'When I am no longer able to communicate, the power will shift totally away from me to the doctors. My fate is then in their hands and I find that very worrying.
'The doctor may decide it is in my best interests for my life to end when that is not what I want.' Lord Phillips, giving the ruling yesterday, said patients would normally have nothing to fear because doctors are obliged to consider their best interests.
He said: 'Where a patient indicates his or her wish to be kept alive by the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH), any doctor who deliberately brings that patient's life to an end by discontinuing the supply of ANH will not merely be in breach of duty but guilty of murder.
'Ultimately, however, a patient cannot demand that a doctor administer a treatment which the doctor considers is adverse to the patient's clinical needs.' Mr Burke's solicitor Paul Conrathe, of the Croydon-based firm Ormerods, said: 'The court has confirmed that patients like Mr Burke who want food and water have to be given it. Failure to do so would constitute murder.
This is a significant matter for him.' He added, however: 'Concerns remain that in the final stages of Mr Burke's life, when he has lost the ability to communicate, a doctor may override his wish.' Joyce Robins, of human rights group Patient Concern, described the decision as a huge step back.
She said: 'The right to food and water is a right to simple basic sustenance, but because they are considered treatment, they can now be taken away.' Bert Massie, chairman of the Disability Rights Commission, said: 'Many disabled people fear that some doctors make negative, stereotypical assumptions about their quality of life.' Professor Sir Graeme Catto, president of the GMC, said: 'Patients should be reassured by this judgment, which emphasises the partnership needed to resolve end of life issues.
Our guidance makes it clear that patients should never be discriminated against on grounds of disability.
'And we have always said that causing patients to die from starvation and dehydration is absolutely unacceptable practice and unlawful.' Mr Burke, who has been backed by Pounds 35,000 worth of legal aid and attended the Appeal Court in a wheelchair, is considering taking his case to the House of Lords.
j.hope@dailymail.co.uk
PATIENTS whose artificial feeding is withdrawn are not conscious during their final days, doctors say.
Rather than suffering an agonising death from starvation, most become dehydrated and slip into a coma.
Dr Keith Andrews, of the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in South London, said patients usually display few outward signs of the effect of a lack of food and water.
'They don't lose a lot of weight but slip deeper into a coma,' he added.
'Dehydration results in the patient being anaesthetised and there is no awareness of the environment. Death comes about as a result of the body shutting down, or pneumonia.' Dr Andrews said nursing staff sometimes apply water to the lips to prevent them cracking. But he added that reports about patients dying in pain from starvation are inaccurate.
That would happen only if food was withdrawn but water maintained.
'In practice, artificial feeding means giving food and water,' he said.
'That is because if you supply only water, then the patient will enter a prolonged period of starvation that can last months.'
Source: Daily Mail; London (UK)
http://www.rednova.com/news/health/191541/dying_patient_loses_his_right_to_food_battle__doctors/