Saturday 15 September 2012

I Look Forward To The Outrage….

So, for the last few months, we’ve been regaled with stories from disability campaigners warning that ‘the vicious Tory government cuts’ were driving the population to despise the disabled, regard them all as ‘scroungers’ and abuse them in the street.

Turns out, though, the biggest danger was our ‘world class NHS’:
An NHS hospital is being sued by a family who say doctors placed a "do not resuscitate" order on their relative, denying him potentially life-saving treatment, because he has Down's syndrome.
The unnamed family are bringing a legal challenge against a hospital in Kent where a doctor apparently decided staff should make no attempt to resuscitate the patient if he suffered cardiac or respiratory arrest, on the basis of his disability.
No, they didn’t discuss any of this with the family, as they should have done, nor with the patient either. They just went ahead and did it.

Because, *shrug* he’s not a real person, is he?

Not that they wouldn’t be quite happy to do it to your grandmother or your child, too.
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust said it could not comment on the case for legal reasons, but said it had "put a great deal in place in recent years to meet the needs of vulnerable patients" and had signed up to the Mencap charity's "Getting it right" charter on helping those with learning disability.
I wonder what it is they think ‘Getting It Right’ actually means..?

And are we going to see the disability rights campaigns switch focus? Maybe start chaining themselves to ambulances instead of buses?

Obstructing A&E departments, rather than benefits offices?

If not…why not?