Wesley J. Smith, who among several valuable services gives us the terrific bioethics blog, Secondhand Smoke, comments on the Independent (U.K.) story about England's National Health Service declaring that the noble "rule of rescue" historically observed by doctors must be abandoned because it's too expensive.The sad fact is that hospitals and nursing homes in England (and elsewhere) have already begun to jettison the rule, exchanging it for the crasser, less humane belief that some people's lives are just not "cost productive" enough to save. This newspaper report only suggests these folks are feeling bold enough nowadays to say it out loud.
Argues Smith, "The utilitarian bioethicists that exert so much control over NHS medical ethics are tightening the noose around the throats of UK patients once again--this time urging that the lives of expensive patients not be extended...Same thing will happen here too--whether arising from government funded health care or HMOs--if we allow "the bioethicists" to decide our health care public policies and medical ethics for us."
