Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Jack the Ripper was an amateur.
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Ah yes, the U.K., where the handicapped are starved to death.
“A 56-year-old man with Down syndrome suffered a preventable death after medical staff at an NHS hospital denied him food for nine days, his family said, highlighting what advocates decry as a devaluation of vulnerable lives in a system that too often fails those with disabilities.
“Adrian Poulton was admitted to Poole Hospital in September 2021 following a fall at his care home that broke his hip. His condition initially improved, but doctors mistakenly marked him as “nil by mouth,” leaving him without nutrition during his stay.
“By the time his relatives discovered the error, he was too weak to recover and died on Sept. 28, 2021, two weeks after admission. An internal hospital investigation confirmed that the lack of nutrition contributed to his death.”
The U.K. can’t decide if it’s suicidal or not… wait, what?
Alas, the U.K. back on the brink of (medically assisted) death.
“In Britain, as in most jurisdictions in the United States, physician-assisted suicide is illegal. Parliament may be about to change that. A legalization bill died in the House of Lords this spring but has been revived. The House of Commons is scheduled to vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday. If it passes, policy in England and Wales will move toward that of Canada, where assisted suicide has become at least the fifth-leading cause of death and claimed, on average, the lives of 45 people a day in 2024.
“The proposal’s proponents invoke two powerful values: compassion and liberty. They say the health system should give those who are in the “final six months” of their lives the option to end their suffering. Many opponents, on the other hand, consider it wrong in principle for the government to designate any subset of the population as having lives not worth living. They are joined by others who support assisted suicide in theory but believe that in practice a new policy would constrict options, pushing the most vulnerable members of society to their deaths. Among the opponents of the bill to whom I spoke this week, that’s the dominant worry: that in the name of freedom, patients in dire circumstances will be not just assisted but encouraged to die.
“The legislation would change both the culture and the incentives of people and institutions in England and Wales. The availability of assisted suicide would enable governments to continue to skimp on palliative care — and to save money for the National Health Service — by dispensing with the most expensive patients. Those patients would confront a new reality in which their killing is a treatment option. And the medical profession, previously charged with healing, would be expected to deliberately hasten death. The Royal College of Physicians has expressed the concern that doctors wouldn’t be able to refuse to participate.”
TTFN.
