In a ‘chilling’ new report, academics have argued how killing patients through assisted suicide in the United Kingdom would save the NHS money and provide organs for transplantation. Dr Gordon Macdonald, Chief Executive of Care not Killing said that this report "exposes the real agenda" of assisted suicide.
The report, Counting The Cost Of Assisted Dying, was produced by ethicist David Shaw, who is based in Glasgow and heath economist Alec Morton.
The report, published in the journal of Clinical Ethics, described how the financial savings that assisted suicide would allow is "the elephant in the room."
The report states: "The resources consumed by patients who are denied assisted dying could instead be used to provide additional (positive) quality-adjusted life years for patients elsewhere in the healthcare system who wish to continue living and to improve their quality of life. The third argument is that organ donation may be an additional potential source of quality-adjusted life years in this context."
Dr Macdonald of Care Not Killing said: "This is a truly chilling report that demonstrates the dangers of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia. It exposes the real agenda that while the authors may not believe money is a motivation for assisted suicide there are some people who do. "
"Is this really what we want for the NHS?"
Dr Macdonald continued: "The treatment of patients should be determined by doctors and other clinical staff in order to promote healing or provide palliative care and not by the bean-counters and their spreadsheets, because if we do, the terminally ill, disabled people and those with chronic conditions will feel pressure to end their lives. This is exactly what we see in the US states of Oregon and Washington, where a majority of those ending their lives cite fear of being a burden on their families and finances.
"We have also seen cancer patients denied life-saving and life-extending treatments due to their cost but offered the drugs to end their lives.
"Is this really what we want for our NHS? A system where some patients are discriminated against because of their age, disability, or because they cannot afford expensive treatments and private health care."
Harvesting organs from the euthanised
Earlier this year, SPUC reported on how doctors in Canada were exposed to have been harvesting organs from the recently euthanised in order to satisfy the demand for donations.
During the first 11 months of 2019, euthanised patients in Ontario accounted for 18 organ and 95 tissue donors. This was a notable 14 percent increase over 2018 and a 109 percent increase over 2017.
Dr Macdonald concluded: "This report highlights the dangers of legalising euthanasia. Very quickly the argument moves from that of personal autonomy to doctors and nurses making value judgements about the quality of other people's lives whilst coming under pressure to save money and tackle so called 'bed blocking' in health services."