Yet the medical establishment said it was all scaremongering!

IN SEPTEMBER 2012, some 22 leading organisations, including the Royal College of GPs and the charity Age UK, signed a joint statement backing the Liverpool Care Pathway and criticising the Mail’s coverage.

It accused this newspaper of publishing ‘ misconceptions’ and ‘ inaccurate information’ that diverted the public’s attention away from its ‘substantial benefits’. The statement claimed the pathway provided ‘excellent end-oflife care’.

The following month, the president and vice-president of the Association for Palliative Medicine wrote to the Mail, accusing it of ‘irresponsible journalism’ and ‘scare stories’.

A letter in October 2012 from Dr Bee Wee and Dr David Brooks said there was a risk that ‘scaremongering’ would lead to the silent majority being denied the best care.

Incidentally, Dr Bee Wee is now the National Clinical Director of End of Life Care at NHS England. Yesterday, she welcomed the replacement guidance from NICE as a way of ensuring the dying receive the ‘best possible care’.

Then, in October 2012, former Lib Dem Health Minister Norman Lamb wrote to the Mail, insisting it was untrue to claim that the Liverpool Care Pathway led to patients being denied treatment.

‘Nothing could be further from the truth; it is simply about ensuring that patients receive whatever treatments are right for them in the final days and hours of their life.’

An article in the British Medical Journal on October 31, 2012, also described the Mail’s coverage as an ‘onslaught of scaremongering publicity’.

Written by GP Margaret McCartney, it added: ‘Criticising current procedures and practices can be useful, and newspapers should be free to do this.

‘But doing so in a way that scaremongers and alleges that doctors are parties to “killings” is reprehensible and unfair to a highly vulnerable group of people and their families.’

In the same issue, another family doctor, Dr Des Spence, said the policy had ‘transformed end-of-life care from an undignified, painful experience into a peaceful, dignified death at home’.

‘There were no good old days in end-oflife care and so we need the Liverpool Care Pathway.’