EXCLUSIVE: Vatican wrong to open door to euthanasia, says LCP whistleblower
The doctor who blew the whistle on abuses carried out under the notorious Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) has warned Catholics that new guidance from the Vatican on end-of-life care is lethally flawed.
The Rev. Dr Patrick Pullicino, a former hospital doctor who was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Southwark after he retired from the NHS, made his remarks in a homily preached during a Mass in the Jesuit church in Valletta, the capital of Malta.
He said the Pontifical Academy of Life had effectively put forward “guidelines whereby in certain circumstances euthanasia could be acceptable”.
“Euthanasia, though, is never acceptable,” said Fr Pullicino.
“Of course we know it is never moral to stop fluids or nutrition, but hospitals have become experts at delaying fluids and nutrition particularly in the elderly,” he said.
“This is most often done when a sick elderly person is classified as ‘dying’ and they are put on morphine and sedatives as so-called end of life care.
“This is now being taken up by the WHO and EU as a way of saving money in elderly care and unfortunately it is finding its way into Malta.
“I was recently contacted by a lady in Malta who is seeking legal address for lack of feeding in the death of her husband. This is of course a covert form of euthanasia.”
He continued: “Pius XII said the doctor’s noble mission is that of healing and saving life. The medical profession must be uncompromisingly loyal to the fundamental principles of ethics and Christian morality.
“Unfortunately there is now a push for a utilitarian medicine in the EU and some doctors including in Malta are going along with this.”
“In addition the ex-labour minister Michael Farrugia wants a dialogue on euthanasia and abortion to start,” he added.
“But why do you want to start a dialogue on something that is intrinsically evil unless you want to bring it in?”
A former consultant neurologist with East Kent Hospitals University Foundation NHS Trust, in 2012 the then Prof Pullicino made a submission to the House of Lords about abuses of patients placed on the LCP, explaining how he removed one “dying” patient who went on to recover.
Following a lecture he gave at the Royal Society of Medicine months later, scores of families came forward to the media with terrible stories of the abuse of their relatives under the end-of-life care protocol.
The Government ordered a review of the LCP and Baroness Neuberger, who led the inquiry, recommended its abolition and it was scrapped in 2014 as a “national disgrace”, in the words of then Care Services Minister Norman Lamb.
The latest remarks of Fr Pullicino came days after the Vatican’s Academy of Life appeared to alter the teaching of the Catholic Church on the provision of food and fluids to seriously ill patients.
In a document called The Small Lexicon on End of Life, the academy, led by Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, takes the view that artificially administer food and fluids do not represent “simple care procedures” but treatments which can be withdrawn by doctors or refused by the patient.
The PAV insisted that this position does not conflict with the position previously taken by the Vatican in response to bishops in the United States on the moral obligation to provide food and water to patients in a vegetative state, even through artificial means.
Pope St John Paul II, however, was clear in his teaching that the withdrawal of food and fluid with the intention of ending life constituted euthanasia.
Addressing a gathering of Catholic medics in Rome in March 2004, the late pope said: “I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life and not a medical act.”
He said: “Death by starvation or dehydration is, in fact, the only possible outcome as a result of their withdrawal. In this sense it ends up becoming, if done knowingly and willingly, true and proper euthanasia by omission.”
The Pope added that such an act is always “a serious violation of the law of God since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person”.
He reminded his audience that “a man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man”, adding that “no evaluation of costs can outweigh the fundamental good which we are trying to protect – that of human life”.
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