LONDON, May 13, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has proposed that some treatments for the elderly be denied if if it is felt the treatments would not be of benefit because of their age.
“What the citizen’s council has said is that if there is a justifiable clinical reason to not provide a treatment for certain age groups, not just older people, that will be OK, if this treatment would not work or could not be offered,” a NICE spokesman said, as reported by politics.co.uk.
“To suggest that anyone should receive less care and attention simply because they happen to be older is blatant discrimination,” said UK charity Age Concern policy manager Jonathan Ellis, according to a femalefirst.co.uk report. “It also runs contrary to the government’s stated aim of tackling the prejudice against older people that exists in health care services.” Age Concern said that 80 percent of physicians believe that the elderly are already discriminated against in the public healthcare system.
A Birmingham Post report said, “The fact that people in their 80s and 90s regularly undergo successful operations underlines how dangerous it would be to assume that old age automatically equates to a hopeless case,” according to NewsMax.com coverage.
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