longwayhome -> RE: UK baby case (7/11/2017 12:50:03 AM)
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ORIGINAL: Greta75 quote:
ORIGINAL: susie Greta you should read these articles which explain the details of Charlie's condition. It is obvious from the first article that what the doctors see and what his mother sees are two very different things. How can he be watching videos with them when he cannot keep his eyes open and when they are open they are facing in different directions? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/10/charlie-gard-key-questions-answered http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40554462 I personally do not know what kind doctors prefer to end a life than to do whatever last resort possible to save a life. What are their priorities? The fact that the UK court has been internationally pressured to relook at evidence for this treatment as the chance is big as 10% for the child to heal, is evidence to me that the doctors in the UK just didn't give a fuck! It's free medical, so whatever. I hope international pressure will prevail and this baby will be given the last chance to fight to live. I now know that free medical is not a good idea. Because as long as I pay. Nobody blocks my way in fighting for a love one life. Because it's free, they easily make decisions to end the life, giving up hope so easily. As it involves taxpayers money. So any life with low hopes, they terminate. To save taxpayers money spent unnecessarily. This is reality of free medical care. Or Universal or single payer, whatever ya wanna call it. Doctors have been wrong and doctors who claim that coma patients who are braindead and will never wake up, have had their patients also woken up. While such cases are minority, but a chance is a chance. Anything can happen. The alternative is immediate death. To deny the parents the right to do everything possible is just inhumane. Greta, how does your mind work? This has nothing to do with free medical. Or for that matter assisted suicide. It also has nothing to do with burden on the tax payer, as the NHS can afford to keep a small number of people in persistent vegetative states alive for long periods. This has to do with what is best for the child in terms of the balance between treatment and suffering. Strictly speaking this is to do with child protection and the welfare of the child. It also has to do with our ability to keep people "alive" indefinitely whatever the cost (to the patient). No-one is suggesting these are simple considerations. I don't think you really understand medicine or medical ethics. You seem to have a problem dealing with the concept that it is sometimes harmful or even cruel to the patient to treat a condition without thinking of the overall benefit to the patient. You use the example of chemotherapy. In fact very few responsible doctors will treat someone where there is only a 10% chance of benefit and large risks of harm. That would not be ethical. Of course you can give chemotherapy on a palliative basis but only if the benefits are likely to outweigh the side-effects. As a result many cancer patients do not receive chemotherapy, because it would cause suffering without significant benefit or actually shorten their life. To do otherwise would be unethical and indeed illegal in most countries. Doctors have quite correctly been prosecuted and disciplined for over-treating patients or making low chances of success seem acceptable against serious risks of harm. This is a matter for debate in health services across the world because the result is that some patients willing to live with high risks do not receive some forms of treatment, whilst many more undoubtedly avoided harm. The death rate for hip replacements has reduced significantly across the world as doctors no longer treat the highest risk patients, which seems appropriate as accepting a significant risk of death for something designed to improve your quality of life can seem disproportionate. There is a continuum and people are at different places on it. What is clear however is that a treatment at all costs approach is unethical and, at least in the US and Europe, it is actually illegal on the grounds of patient well-being. Your hatred of the UK also leads you to thinking that this case is a quirk of our legal system or approach to health service delivery. There have been many cases from around the world involving the "switching off of machines" in the interests of the patient. This one is just particularly emotive because it involves a child and it has been so expertly presented to the media. All of that said, in this case the proposed treatment is a non-invasive oral medication with a low risk of any side effects beyond a stomach upset. Refraining from "switching off the machine" until it is tried would seem proportionate if it can be done in the UK with no obvious further suffering for the child, who cannot see, hear, communicate and has severe brain damage. Despite what you suggested, there is no expectation of cure but there is a possibility of some improvement, although the drug has never been used on a patient with such severe brain damage. Dragging the child across the world to be a guinea pig in an experiment by over-excited, media-savvy, research scientists, I have serious concerns about however.
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