The Liverpool Care Pathway provides a rubric for managing the care of the terminally ill as they approach death. A helpful pamphlet explaining what it is and what it does is available here. Ideally, I’d quote the lot; but for the sake of efficiency, I’ll make do with an edited quotation: What is the Liverpool […]
Month: November 2012
Is Medical Equipment Halal? Kosher?
A recent intercalating student of mine got in touch with this query the other day: Total parenteral nutrition is given as a replacement for nutrition where the patient cannot or should not be digesting food: it is given intravenously so bypasses digestion. Two patients have asked my current educational supervisor if the TPN solution is […]
Savita Halappanavar: A Woman who Died Needlessly, not a Political Wedge’
Guest post by Sorcha Uí Chonnachtaigh I am going to, rather controversially, agree with one aspect of the statements of pro-life activists commenting on this case. That is not something I thought I’d ever say. Like, ever ever. A statement issued by Youth Defence (one of Ireland’s most radical pro-life organisations) made the valid point that “Irish doctors are […]
Enhancing the ill: The therapy-enhancement…
By David Hunter This post is in effect a gauntlet, a challenge for those who are significantly bothered by enhancements, such that they think that enhancing would be unethical or at least that there is a significant ethical difference between the two, largely because I can’t really work out what the fuss is and would […]
Kelly Hills, Data Miner
Kelly Hills has been data-mining – collecting and collating information about the frequency with which certain terms appear in paper titles in three journals: the JME, Bioethics, and the AJoB. I was going to say that the charts are not much use, but that they are pretty and quite cool; and I was going to […]
Neonatal Withdrawal of Treatment: A Doctor Writes…
There’s a great little article recently published in the BMJ about what it’s like to be the medic considering withdrawal of feeding from a neonate. Survival is often much longer than most physicians think; reflecting on my previous patients, the median time from withdrawal of hydration to death was 10 days. I had no idea it’d be that […]
All Right, Peter: I’ll Bite
Over at the CMF blog, Peter Saunders has a slightly peculiar post. He begins by criticising Today programme presenters for not being hard enough with someone whose husband had gone to Dignitas; but then turns his attention – via a jibe at the rights made-to-order all-purpose bogey man, the “liberal elite” – to what he calls […]