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Friday 10 January 2014

Death certificate

We have a weird attitude to death don’t we? The recent Mark Duggan case highlights it.

If Mr Duggan had been an aborted unborn baby, his death would not have been noticed.

If he had expired under the Liverpool Care Pathway, his demise would have produced not a ripple of interest among the chattering classes.

If he had been a victim of NHS negligence, his passing may have been noted but probably not in any high profile sense.

Somehow our chattering classes don’t take much notice of large numbers of deaths occurring under the aegis of certificated professionals, but certification doesn’t include the police on any scale. Nor should it of course, but why then does it include medical professionals?

The sanctity of life is a myth of course – we always knew that. It depends who you are in the political firmament. It also depends on who ended your life – on the certificates they have on the wall.

3 comments:

Sackerson said...

Over 8 million abortions in the UK since 1967, and counting. Didn't they abolish hanging in the same year? Only the innocent can be executed.

Demetrius said...

I have known quite a number of people who died of quite serious conditions who never managed to get past their GP. And of the few that did some were misdiagnosed. And one with a highly dangerous potentially terminal condition who was told that as the local NHS did not have a specialist it would not allow referral to one elsewhere.

A K Haart said...

Sackers - what was it Stalin said about millions of deaths?

Demetrius - I sometimes wonder how many of these stories there are. So many people have a horror story to tell.