Letter from Gosport Campaigners to GMC

Please read this letter, courtesy of Rita Pal, that the Gosport campaigners sent to the GMC. Then sign the petition for Elsie's law. This abuse must stop.

Twelve Reasons Why Assisted Suicide Should Not Be Legalised

Twelve reasons why assisted suicide should not be legalised;

1.)The number of elderly beds in hospitals has been reduced from 27 000 - 21 000 over a period of five years, a reduction of 25%.

2.) Mid Staffordshire Hospital

3.) From 2004 - 2008, the number of specialist nursing homes for dementia sufferers has been reduced by 389, a drop of 9%.

4.)£289 per head per sufferer is spent on cancer research. £11 per head per sufferer is spent on dementia.

5.) NICE tried to remove all dementia medicines from presciption. After protests, it reinstated them, but only to be prescribed in the later stages of dementia when medicines like Aricept would be useless. Doctors now have to lie about what stage a dementia sufferer is at, so that they qualify for a presciption.

6.) Martin Ryan, a Downe's sufferer, died after being left for 26 days without food or water in hospital. Mencap reported on this and several other cases of neglect of people with learning difficulties in hospitals.

7.) Martin Amis is using the issue to promote his latest book launch.

8.) The worst health secretary in living memory and failed Labour coup leader is supporting it.

9.) Dr Jane Barton injected her elderly patients with doses of diamorphine and killed them. The GMC let her keep her registration.

10.) Margaret Haywood blew the whistle on neglect in an elderly care ward and got struck off the nursing register.

11.) The pro-euthanasia bioethicist Dr. Helga Kuhse said:
"If we can get people to accept the removal of all treatment and care—especially removal of food and fluids—they will see what a painful way this is to die and then, in the patient's best interests, they will accept the lethal injection."

12.) Hippocrates said:
"First do no harm."

The Time is Now to Stop the Rationalisation of Madness

Ay, fight and you may die, run and you'll live. At least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives.... but they'll never take our FREEDOM!!



Sometimes you wish you could just close your eyes and wish it all away.



That is how I have felt for the past three weeks since Terry Pratchett, one of my favourite authors, came out in favour of assisted suicide. I held my head in my hands as I listened to him lightly dismiss the 'possible abuses' that could result from such a law. I haven't blogged on the subject yet, despite the many posts from others, because I didn't feel able to. That has changed, and what has changed it was Archbishop Vincent Nichols's comments on a 'lack of compassion in the NHS'. My first reaction was the same one that I had to Terry Pratchet; a face palm, looking out through my fingers to see the inevitable cavalry charging towards what was on the face of it, an incredibly naive remark. My second reaction was; 'Actually, he's right.'

How we have arrived there is complicated. It was a process that started many years ago and crept into something far more sinister. Some have been more willing than others in this process, and medi bloggers like Militant Nurse are at pains to record just exactly what is going on with staffing and the like. But the original charge remains; however we arrived there, however we have protested, the NHS is losing its compassion, especially towards the elderly. And we have now reached the point of doom with this process; assisted suicide, the place where all these small steps have been moving towards, is now on the agenda and the pressure is relentless. When people like Martin Amis talk of a silver tsunami and old people stinking out cafes and restaurants, things are getting serious.

Creep is not new. There is a book called 'Defying Hitler', a memoir of Nazi Germany from the 20's right up until 1938, when the writer Sebastien Haffner moved to Britain with his Jewish wife. It is an account chilling in its ordinariness; Haffner charts the whole process from the Nazis being regarded as boors and clowns by the German middle class, to the acceptance that they were going to run the country, to the acceptance that they were going to war. But it is the details that make this book; the day that Haffner arrived at the court that he worked, to find that all the Jewish lawyers had been removed and a young clueless Nazi had been given the job of judge; his attempts to stay friendly with people in his company who also happened to hate Jews; a relationship with a Jewish girl that went on far too long simply because he wanted to defy the Nazis about non-Aryan relationships; the boot camp he was sent to, to undergo 'training' by the Nazis and the humiliating vulgar games that they were forced to play. But the overriding sentiment of the book is disbelief at what is happening, reinforced with a reluctance and perceived helplessness to stop it.

So it is with the assisted suicide debate. We have gone to an initial disgust at the idea, to an understanding of the idea, to an acceptance of its possibility, to a desire to implement it. Underneath the debate is the sly subtext of the 'growing elderly population', 'pensions timebomb', 'silver tsunami' and the solution is waved wordlessly in our faces. And medical staff have been bullied into accepting the unacceptable in hospitals, because they cannot wave a magic wand to make more staff appear. Whistleblow and you're sacked. Report what's happening to the media and it will not be printed. 400 -1000 people dead in Mid Staffordshire? We don't want to talk about that do we? Let's get that nice chap with the fedora hat and funny books on, to talk about euthanasia instead.

As a health campaigner and a carer, I find myself torn. I know what's going on behind the scenes. I understand what is happening with staffing, with bed reductions, with care homes being shut. I understand that elderly care has been getting dismantled. And yet, as a carer, I have seen things that would make your eyes water. I have seen people starved in hospital. They were related to me. I have seen nurses that don't care, doctors that are too busy or unavailable to deal with the situation. I have complained to a manager while they chewed gum all through my protestations. I want it to stop. And it is only going to stop when enough people at the rockface come forward and complain.

I don't underestimate what I am asking here. I am a non-medical medi blogger, an outsider, and I have a cheek to ask it. But I am asking now, at this point, because I understand that if enough medics do not come forward now and crush this, it will be all over bar the shouting. If you want assisted suicide to remain illegal, if you want an elderly care system, if you want people like Jane Barton to be put in jail, then it has to be done now.


In 1945, the Americans and British liberated the concentration camps. Their disbelief and anger at the conditions contrasted with the panicked rationalisation of the camp guards, who were only doing their job, who were a cog in a vast wheel of consequences and who could not see a way to refuse to do the job they were asked to do, unless they wanted to take a trip to the Russian Front. In the same way, Archbishop Nichols has spoken from the simple uncluttered view of an outsider seeing the NHS with a clear eye. It is madness rationalised. We are leaving people starving and thirsty. We are turning a blind eye to malpractice. We are letting people die in agonising circumstances like Martin Ryan. And we are doing so, because we are afraid; for our jobs, for our loved ones being treated in case they get worse treatment, for our families in case they are punished as well.

We must speak out now. We must put aside our fear and hopelessness and dare to imagine a different outcome. We must because, unlike the concentration camps, there is no cavalry on the way. We are the cavalry. This depends on all of us; medics, journalists, clergy, carers and celebrities speaking out with a clear voice. If we are afraid, we need to remember that this is going to come to us all, because we all grow old. War is upon us, whether we like it or not.We cannot choose the times that we have been born in; but we can choose how we react to them. It is time we looked our enemy in the eye and marched out to meet him. We will not get another chance to do so.