In practically all countries, governmental institutions have imposed criteria for selecting the people who need to be treated (and therefore those who must be left to die)
We must note that care for older people was refused not only for Coronavirus, but was also refused, in general, for visits and surgery (which could have saved such people at the start).
As part of the Medicine claims, selecting patients to be treated is not only illegal (in fact doctors are asked not to disclose the thing), but it
it’s not even a medically valid criterion,
since a 65-year-old person is not necessarily less likely to heal than a younger person.
One thing that is not said is that for a State to lose a young person means to lose an income (it pays contributions for retirement), while to lose an elderly person means less expense (retirement, and any medical treatment if chronically ill).
Note that according to these rules,
Doctors take on the power to “sentence people” to death
(but in order to practice their profession, doctors must submit to an oath, with which, among other things, they commit themselves to “pursuing the defense of life”).
.
● The example from Italy: «with the exceptional situation presented by the coronavirus in Italy, special guidelines were developed for Italian health care professionals dealing with COVID-19. … Italian doctors were being forced to choose which patients to treat – with the elderly getting a lower priority.
“Informed by the principle of maximizing benefits for the largest number,” the guidelines suggest that “the allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care. … It may become necessary to establish an age limit for access to intensive care.”
Giorgo Gori, mayor of Bergamo, in Lombardy, Italy’s worst affected region, said that, … “forced the doctors to decide not to intubate some very old patients,” essentially leaving them to die. » <read Article>
● «Camosy mentioned the fact that Spanish hospitals, for example, have refused to treat people over 65 years of age and fears that “sheer utilitarianism, a prevailing concept in Western medicine and ethics, may become a code of conduct in blatant violation of civil rights, notably those of the elderly.”
… The New England Journal of Medicine stated that this form of health rationing “is often better tolerated if done in silence.” This is also one of the reasons why doctors and nurses have been cautioned against granting interviews, on penalty of dismissal.» <read Article>
● «Older people should be denied treatment for the coronavirus if a younger, healthy person needs help, according to Prof Arthur Caplan, a prominent US medical ethicist.
Under the Equality Act, it is illegal to deny an older person access to healthcare on the basis of their age.
Dave Archard, emeritus professor at Queen’s University, Belfast, said an overburdened service is no excuse for discrimination that would result in a “cull” of older people.
Using age as an indicator of clinical frailty and the likelihood of survival is, he said, crude and unreliable. … “It becomes exposed as wrongly discriminatory because it licences differential treatment based on ‘unwarranted animus or prejudice’ against old people.”
Catherine Foot, director of evidence at the Centre for Ageing Better agreed. “Chronological age must never be the principle factor that determines a person’s right to care. Medically speaking, it is a poor proxy for a person’s capacity to respond well to intensive care and to recover. » <read Article>
