Hurry up and die -- terminally ill denied food and water in Britain

By Aussiegirl

Once you have government single-payer health care this will be the inevitable result. The bottom line will always win out over individual rights. You become nothing more than a burden to the state, and the quicker they can dispose of you once you are no longer productive, the better and more economically efficient. As we saw recently in the Schiavo case here, food and water are no longer considered basic sustenance but become medical treatment, as such, they can be denied, even against your own wishes. Just recently, New York and the CDC said they wanted to begin track diabetics who were not controlling their blood sugars by means of surveying the blood sugar measurements of everyone receiving a blood test. Those whose blood sugar is not being controlled properly will be called and reminded to get treatment, etc. - ostensibly because they cost the state a lot of money to treat. How long before food ration cards will be issued to diabetics to ensure that they do not eat cakes or sugary products and for government food police to monitor the contents of their refrigerators. Government health care is the opening to the biggest intrusion in your private life that there can be, even unto causing your death through dehydration and starvation against your will. It's for the good of the state, you know. Nothing personal. Get used to it. This death may be awaiting you.

The Sun Online - News: Dying can be denied food

THE high court ruled today doctors do have the power to withdraw food and drink from terminally ill patients - even if it is against their wishes.

The General Medical Council (GMC) was appealing against a previous ruling that gave Lesley Burke - who suffers from a degenerative brain condition - the right to insist on nuterition during the final stages of his illness.

Mr Burke, 45, won the original ruling last year and it was hailed as a landmark by groups representing the terminally ill.

But today a panel of three judges headed by Master of the Rolls Lord Phillips set aside the decision.

The appeal judges were told at a hearing in May that the High Court ruling could put doctors in "an impossibly difficult position".

Philip Havers QC, representing the GMC, said the ruling would force doctors to provide the treatment a patient demanded even if the doctor’s view was the treatment would not provide any benefit.

He said a patient did not have the right to demand any particular form of treatment.

Mr Burke, of Lancaster, suffers from cerebellar ataxia and sought the original ruling because he feared he would be in no condition to insist on food and water when his disease reached its final stages.

He said: "Obviously I am disappointed that I have not got all that
I wished for.

"I have every wish to take it to the House of Lords."

He was refused permission to take the case to the Law Lords but can petition the House for a hearing.

Joyce Robins, co-director of human rights campaign group Patient Concern, said the decision was a disappointment.

She said: "Doctors again have extraordinary power over us, making decisions on how and when we die.

"This is a huge step backwards for patients.

"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.

"We feel the judges are completely out of touch with the feelings of people in Leslie’s position.

"Patients are entirely at the mercy of doctors making the decision over
whether they live or die, which is obviously an intensely personal decision.

"This is only round one. We will take this all the way to Strasbourg if we have to."