Britain's NICE Murder Policy Exposed: 1 in 6 Euthanized

September 3, 2009 (LPAC)--As reported today in the British Daily Telegraph in an article entitled "Sentenced to death on the NHS," 16.5 percent or one of every 6 people who died in the United Kingdom from 2007-2008 had been subjected to "involuntary euthanasia." As Lyndon LaRouche commented, the truth is finally coming out about the British healthcare policy, which is the model for Obama's Nazi legislation, and that is the result of the fight that LaRouche has led in the United States. This report comes at the point that Obama's health care policy has been thoroughly exposed in the U.S., and Obama is desperately trying to revive it.

On the same day, the Daily Telegraph published a letter to the editor by doctors and experts denouncing the NICE program called "Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP)," which was designed by the Marie Curie hospice in Liverpool, working with a team at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust. It was originally developed as a way to care for cancer patients towards the end of their life, but has been adapted to apply to all patients no matter what their illness.

The signers of the letter denounce the program as giving premature death sentences to patients by denying them fluids, nutrition, medicine, and treatment after making a determination that they are close to death, a determination that is often wrong. This program was recommended as a model by the NICE in 2004. It has been adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices, and 540 care homes in England currently use the system.

The date 2004 is significant, because it means that the program was put into effect by NICE during the regime of Tony Blair. Blair's healthcare advisor from 2000-2004 was Simon Stevens who is now with United Health Care in the U.S., which has the exclusive franchise to provide insurance for AARP members, and is a strong supporter of the Obama plan.

The doctors' letter charges that patients are wrongly put on the pathway, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that they would die. In 2007-2008, 16.5 percent of the deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Criticism of the LCP has long been simmering beneath the surface in the UK. Back in December 1999, even before the LCP program was formerly recommended by NICE, Dr. Adrian Treloar, now a psycho-geriatrician and senior lecturer at the Grennwich Hospital and Guys, Kings and St. Thomas's Hospitals in London, denounced the British NHS for involuntary euthanasia. At that time the British Medical Association (BMA) had issued guidelines that said that doctors should be allowed to authorize withdrawal of food and water by tube for victims of severe stroke and dementia who can no longer express their wishes. The guidance said: "Doctors should have the final say over whether treatment including feeding and giving water is in the patients best interest. It is not always appropriate to prolong life."

More, recently on April 26, 2008, Dr. Adrian Treloar, warned in a letter to the British Medical Journal that the Liverpool Care Pathway is a blueprint for systematic euthanasia of disabled patients. "Combined with withdrawal of fluids, deep sedation leads quickly to death. Treloar wrote that the LCP threatens patients because its eligibility criteria do not ensure that only people who are about to die are allowed on the pathway. They allow people who are thought to be dying, are bed-bound, and are unable to take tablets onto the pathway. In chronic disease such as dementia, dying may take years, but such patients may be eligible. GPs often put patients on to such a pathway without palliative care advice."