Friday, April 27, 2018

Alfie Evans, Charlie Gard, the Liverpool Pathway and Ezekiel Emanuel

What do all those names have in common?

The story of Alfie Evans in the UK is another one of those "unless you've been living under a rock" stories.  It needs no introduction, but perhaps a summary.  The British National Health Service is insisting that Alfie be allowed to die with dignity - although reports from people who have seen the room say they're not even allowing him to live with dignity.  Stories and photos come back  showing the hospital staff leaves him to sleep in urine, and that mold grows in his breathing tubes.

Alder Hey, the hospital where Alfie lies, has a history of appalling treatment of patients.
In 1998, a heart specialist at Alder Hey accidentally revealed during an inquiry that the hospital was storing — in bulk — children’s organs. With no consent from the parents, Alder Hey Hospital was harvesting the organs from dead babies.

They were also caught selling human tissue to pharmaceutical companies in exchange for cash donations, but what they didn’t sell, they stockpiled. Alder Hey had 2,080 children’s hearts, over 800 other organs, and 400 full fetuses. A pathologist at Alder Hey was even accused of keeping the head of a baby stored in a jar. NONE of this was done with parental consent.
Now the hospital is not only denying Alfie medical care, they won’t let his parents take him home to die and say it's because the protests show the parents have a bad attitude.  Merseyside (city) Police threatened people who posted opinions that disagreed with the government.  Spokesmen for Alder Hey hospital are now saying that unless his parents have a “sea change in attitude,” they won’t allow Alfie to go home.  This week, Alfie was taken off life support and defied expectations by breathing on his own.  It took the hospital most of a day to decide to give the child water.  

Last July, in a similar case, the UK government insisted that Charlie Gard die - it's too euphemistic to say they allowed him to die, it wasn't that passive - and denied the parents visitation to be with Charlie when he died. After a lengthy struggle to try to save the child, he was transferred to a hospice, taken off his respirator, and quickly died.

It's important to recognize that neither case is about the cost of treatment.  In both cases, outside sources are guaranteeing funding and offering to coordinate the treatment.  In Charlie Gard's case there was a crowdfunding effort that gathered funds and an American researcher who thought Charlie might be treatable.  In Alfie's case, the Italian government has granted him Italian citizenship and has offered him treatment there.  Additionally, Pope Francis has offered to intervene, leaving an aircraft in the UK to take Alfie to Italy. 

The cases are about the governments ability to decide who lives and who dies.  Like the saying about gun control goes, it's about control

This shouldn't be a surprise; the UK enacted the Liverpool Pathway over 6 years ago.  The Pathway was a treatment protocol to kill off the elderly, primarily by depriving them of water and food, although there were allegations it was used on children.  Hospitals paid millions to reach their goal numbers of elderly patients "allowed" to die on the program (I hear the Mafia pays to get rid of people, too), and there have been many stories of complaints by relatives of how awfully their parents were treated. It's a system that a prominent oncologist called "immoral medicine" and "the most corrupt practice in British Medicine".  We shouldn't be surprised they'd yank treatment from the youngest.  Killing off the young as well as the old is a natural consequence of systems like the UK's. 

The same ideas are encoded into the laws of Obamacare.  This is what the media buzz about "death panels" was about back before Obamacare was passed.  The Complete Lives System, which came from a paper co-written by Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's brother Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel.  The guy who said that he hoped to die by 75 and thought that was the right way to run a healthcare system.  The concept is most easily explained with a graph (pdf warning).


It's based on the ability of the patient to repay society for the cost of the treatment.  An infant like Alfie won't be in a position to pay back taxes for at least 20 years, so they get the lowest priority of treatment of any age group.  Let them die.  Someone over 60 might be able to pay back to society, but the chances they'll pay it back in taxes get lower the farther into retirement they go.

For a concrete example, consider someone needing a kidney transplant and we'll make up that one is 30, one is 5 and one is 70.  A 30 year old working a good job has the best chance of getting one.  Heck, yank one of out of a 10 or 12 year old in for something else and get that 30 year old back to work!  The 5 year old or the 70 year old probably isn't going to be getting a kidney unless one happens to be available.  

I've met people who defend socialized medicine; I'm sure you have, too.  In cases like this, the usual response is to talk to us like we're retards who can't grasp that there's always some sort of healthcare rationing going on and that the experts of the NHS know best.  There's tons wrong with the way health care is done in the US, but I've never read one thing about the NHS that made me say, "I have got to get me some of that!"


EDIT to add, 4/28 1042 EDT:  Alfie has passed away since this was posted last night (our time).  The State wins again and grinds on.


14 comments:

  1. The situation with Alfie Evans makes me think that stockpiling ammunition is a rational response to any discussion of socialized medicine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That was my response as well.

      Delete
    2. That only works if you know where they live in your neighborhood, and know their schedules and their spouses schedules as well. If you wait for THEM to show up on YOUR doorstep, you'll be lucky to take out even one of them.

      On the other hand, if their spouse can't be sure whether the doorbell is an evangelist trying to save her soul, or the Angel of Death come to send her to hell, that realigns the discussion over the dinner table as to the appropriateness of a career in "Law Enforcement". And the same for when she has to worry about whether the minor fender bender was a result of her distracted driving, or if it was instead her final stop on the highway to hell.

      Or do you think you'll REALLY get a chance to use that ammunition on something other than "Law Enforcement"??? I would only remind you that they exist to protect their Masters, protect their Brothers in Blue, and generate revenue. Anything else is merely a sidelight. They continue to make Mafia Enforcers look noble in comparison. After all, if you paid your Mafia taxes, they actually PROTECTED you.

      Delete
    3. This morning's news carries word that Alfie passed away. The state wins again.

      Borepatch's summaries here and here, including comments, are hard to top.

      Delete
  2. Michelle Malkin gives several examples of this happening in the US. Without O-care.
    http://michellemalkin.com/2018/04/25/alfie-and-haleigh-and-charlie-and-jahi/
    Worth the read.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's ghoulish and repugnant. I'm with Borepatch.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rhetorical question- Ever been hungry? Really hungry? Or thirsty? Desperately thirsty? It is torture. It IS a torture, and USED as a torture.

    What passes for news out of England these days almost makes the Gulag seem humane.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We in America have hospice mostly for the elderly who are sick and dying. But the name "hospice" implies "care". Well, there is care but it all/mostly comes from the untrained family member and not from medical staff. There will be a visit once or twice a week from a nurse but primarily they are there to make sure the patient is getting their pain medication. Why, you ask? Because they could not go through hospice without being drugged. I would wager that most patients in hospice die from dehydration and not their disease. The care giver expects the patient to ask for water if they are thirsty but the pain medication means that the patient does not feel thirsty. Now, make no mistake, the patient is dying anyway and perhaps you could justify this in that they are drugged and in no pain and dying from dehydration might be a blessing depending on what their illness is. But the point is they are not getting liquids intravenously and they are not being forced to drink 2 quarts a day. It is likely that their urine output isn't being monitored and in fact this untrained care giver is likely ignorantly happy that the patient isn't urinating often as they are the ones who have to change the sheets. So the bottom line is the patient dies, the cause never gets diagnosed because they were sent home to die and the care giver, often the daughter or spouse, has no clue that they failed in their job because they didn't keep the patient hydrated. I dunno, was that the intent of hospice???

      Delete
    2. I would merely note that, in spite of the evil of Haleigh’s and Jahi’s treatment by this country's "medical professionals", the government did NOT refuse to let their parents transfer them to somewhere else where they might receive treatment. Charlie and Alfie, however...

      And it is the UK's "finest" who make sure of that. As will THIS country's "finest" when they are told to do so... Rove Republicans, one and all, with all the character traits associated with same:

      No morals.
      No principles.
      No scruples.
      No honor.

      They do WHATEVER they are told, as long as that paycheck keeps comin' in. And when they are told to take care of you, they will show up in the middle of the night in their MRAP, wearing body armor and carrying full auto weapons and tear gas. The only way you can win is by convincing their spouse that "Law Enforcement" is not an appropriate career for their husbands. And their spouses are not even REMOTELY "innocent". Or do you think the UK plod spouses do not understand what foul sewage THEIRS are, yet they cheer them on anyway???

      Delete
  5. Have you read Anne Barnhardt comments? Apparently the Italian government made Alfie a citizen, and threatened murder charges against the demonic torturers!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Historically recently some submissively law-abiding Germans agreed to register their weapons, surrender their weapons, concentrate into ghettos, surrender their occupations, and climb onto boxcars. Socialized medicine is the variation of Trail of Tears which works on you. Go into a hospital and die of an infection due to understaffing from "cost". That "cost" number is the output of a government death panel. The time to use the ammo is now, years before you go to the hospital. Once you go to the hospital it's too late, there's no improvement you can make using the ammo.

    ReplyDelete
  7. https://www.davidwarrenonline.com/2018/04/28/the-child-died/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's worth a read, folks. Shorter than this piece, for sure.

      Delete
  8. The father states the hospital withheld food and water until 28 hours after life support was terminated. Why did they feed him at that point? I believe it was because they couldn't stand the embarrassment of him continuing to survive in spite of all of their arguments to the court (and the media), and not because they had a miraculous change of heart.

    How difficult would it have been for them to insert a substance into his food that would kill him, slowly enough (he died about 24 hours after receiving the food) to make it seem as if they were right, that he couldn't live without life support, without being the obvious agents of his death? I can think of several without even opening a book on toxicology.

    You say this is conspiracy theory? The court gave them the authority (I refuse to say "the right") to withhold food and water. They certainly didn't feed him to prove the parents right. If they were acting in step with their claims that it was cruel to artificially support his life, why would they suddenly decide to feed him? Just think about that for a bit.

    It may be too late to do a toxicology screen on Alfie's remains, but if not, I'm sure many of us would like to know the truth. If the medical staff terminated him when he might have remained viable, they should face murder charges.

    If there is no possibility of doing a post-mortem tox screen, then I certainly would not want this brought up, as it would be horrible to leave the parents wondering if they might have had Alfie with them for years, instead of a few days.

    ReplyDelete