The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Out on a Limb
- “Iowa Poll: Indecision Still Factor in Race”–headline, Des Moines Register website, Dec. 5
- “Government’s Crystal Ball a Bit Cloudy on Forecasting Unemployment Rate”–headline, TheHill.com, Dec. 6
- “Newt Gingrich: ‘Kids Shouldn’t Work in Coal Mines’ “–headline, Politico.com, Dec. 6
Great Moments in Socialized Medicine (from 12/2 BOTW Archives)
Physicians working for Britain’s National Health Service “are failing to inform up to half of families that their loved ones have been put on a scheme to help end their lives, the Royal College of Physicians has found,” reports London’s Daily Telegraph:
Tens of thousands of patients with terminal illnesses are being placed on a “death pathway”, almost double the number just two years ago, a study published today shows.
Health service guidance states that doctors should discuss with relations whether or not their loved one is placed on the scheme which allows medical staff to withdraw fluid and drugs in a patient’s final days. In many cases this is not happening, an audit has found. As many as 2,500 families were not told that their loved ones had been put on the so-called Liverpool Care Pathway, the study disclosed.
If you want to be philosophical about it, every living thing is on the death pathway. But the idea of government employees pushing human beings down it faster is chilling, to say the least. The only saving grace in this horrifying story is that according to former Enron adviser [and NYTimes columnist] Paul Krugman, “these stories are false.”
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
