NHS intentionally kills off at least 130,000 elderly patients every year

via: NaturalNews
Sunday, June 24, 2012
By: Ethan A. Huff

[NaturalNews] A controversial end-of-life care program that was allegedly designed to improve “quality of dying” for terminally ill patients in the U.K. is being widely abused as a form of back-door euthanasia, says a prominent doctor and professor. The U.K.’s Daily Mail reports that the program, known as the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), is now responsible for killing off at least 130,000 patients in the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) every single year.

LCP was developed, at least on the surface, as a way for hospitals to help dying patients pass on with dignity, and without pain. The idea is that, should a nurse or doctor suspect that a patient only has hours or days to live, LCP can be implemented to slowly sedate the patient and gradually kill him. Because a steady stream of morphine or other powerful painkiller is being administered the whole time, the patient allegedly dies in a much more pleasant state than if left to the normal dying process.

Is LCP a legal cover for ‘death panels?’

But many healthcare practitioners have apparently been improperly assessing patients as being terminally ill, and summoning them to early death based on illegitimate, third-party opinion. Such patients may simply be troublesome for hospital staff, for instance, or merely taking up an extra bed, which prompts the careless or even sinister implementation of LCP on patients that may have gone on to live otherwise healthy lives if they had been allowed to recover.

Professor Patrick Pullicino, a consultant neurologist at East Kent Hospitals and Professor Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, says he has personally witnessed the LCP program, which claims to be a “care pathway,” be used to deliberately kill patients that were not terminally ill. Pullicino says he personally saved the life of one 71-year-old man who had already been put on the LCP program — the man, who Pullicino had to work very hard to get off LCP, ended up living another 14 months.

“The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway,” says Pullicino. “Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP. Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition. Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible scientifically.”

Centralized healthcare further empowers doctors to assume the role of fate

The fact that it is not scientifically possible to determine how much time a patient has left to live calls into question whether or not LCP, or programs like it, are ever appropriate in any patient situation. There really is no way for any individual to truly know the death timeline of another person, after all, as someone who appears gravely ill could eventually recover, while a healthy-looking person could drop dead at any moment.

These are situations where the final life or death decision should be left up to fate, not man. And yet man-made “death panel” programs like LCP are the only logical endgame of government-run healthcare programs, which also includes Obamacare in America. Centralized, government-run healthcare systems by nature degrade individual human lives into nothing more than fluid economic factors that are assessed and valued solely on their utility rather than on their intrinsic worth as human beings.

Source: NaturalNews.com

Doctor charged with murder in overdose of multiple patients, prescribed over 27,000 medications in three years

NaturalNews
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
By: Ethan A. Huff

[NaturalNews] A California doctor accused of carelessly dispensing prescription drugs to patients who may not necessarily have needed them is facing murder charges following the deaths of several of these patients. The U.K.’s Daily Mail reports that Dr. Hsiu-Ying Tseng, 42, prescribed more than 27,000 medications to patients over a three-year period, which translates into an average of 25 prescriptions a day, which resulted in several of their deaths.

Vu Nguyen, 29, of Lake Forest; Steven Ogle, 25, of Palm Desert; and Joseph Rovero III, 21, of San Ramon all met their fate after obtaining prescriptions from Tseng for various pain and anxiety symptoms. According to records held by the Osteopathic Medical Board, Tseng failed to properly examine these three young men in accordance with care guidelines, and proceeded to just give them the dangerous drugs for no medical reason.

The prescription opiate drugs oxycodone (OxyContin) and hydrocodone (Vicodin) were among those linked to the men’s deaths, as were certain benzodiazepine drugs and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. But because Tseng allegedly already knew that her prescribing methods were linked to causing patient deaths prior to the more recent deaths, prosecutors have charged her with second-degree murder and 21 other felony counts related to prescribing prescription drugs for no legitimate medical need.

“This case was beyond anything else we have ever seen,” said Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley in a statement, noting that the case was heavily investigated prior to the serious charges being filed. “Dr. Feelgoods who knowingly over-prescribe drugs for no medical reason other than someone asks for the drugs and pays the doctor a staggering amount of money will be dealt with severely” (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com).

Tseng is currently being held on $3 million bail. If convicted, she could face life in prison.

In a similar case, Dr. Harriston L. Bass, Jr. of Las Vegas was recently arrested for murder after a patient to which he sold prescription drugs died. In that case, the Nevada Attorney General’s office conducted a thorough investigation for six months before levying the same second-degree murder charge that Tseng received, as well as 21 counts of sale of a controlled substance, and six counts of possession for the sale of a controlled substance (http://www.8newsnow.com).

“There’s a new prosecutorial focus on these pill mills, which are doctors that are creating a cottage industry of addicts,” added Steven Clark, a legal analyst from South Bay, Calif., about such cases (http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com).

Source:  NaturalNews.com