Les Doe

Comment on: Lansley against legal duty of candour

Les Doe's comment 16-Jun-2010 7:13 am

What possesses more value would one think... a sporty Maserati or a prestigious Mercedes-Benz, perhaps, to snatch the attention in the consultant’s car park; an HD plasma tv, perhaps, upon which to view the World Cup in full surround sound..? If either or all of these luxury goods went wrong and required repair, it is surely well within the consumer’s right to demand that the repair work be undertaken by qualified professionals and that, should any damage be done, even inadvertently, that damage should be owned up to. If the new government said anything otherwise than that, there would be an outcry from consumer rights groups up and down the country. The government would be lambasted and ridiculed in the tabloid press. And rightly so! And what of a human life, our very selves, our human flesh and blood, the only thing any of us, all of us, will truly possess throughout our lives, in luxury and in penury? I put it to Mr. Lansley, bluntly, in no uncertain terms, that that is something beyond value, invaluable, and to take this stance he diminishes human life such that it is something quite, quite else, without value whatsoever. Care Not Killing has warned recently that we are witnessing a very dangerous, slippery slope. A slippery slope is ever a slippery and dangerous slope to tread. Shall we return to the dark days of the 30s? Lest we forget, the holocaust grew its roots in the hospitals and the asylums of Hitler’s Reich. The humane ending of a worthless life had its admirers worldwide. Its protagonists, respectable and respected medical professionals, hailed these bold new approaches, just as do the supporters of euthanasia today. Extraordinary, but it was out of that darkness of mercy killing grew the death camps. It really is not an exaggeration to say that to permit the cover-up of medical mistakes is only one step away from that.