Communications isn’t the only breakdown here

It’s the visible symptom of the deeper disease infecting the health care system across the globe, and it’s as evident in the case of Martin Ryan as it has been anywhere lately.

There are news articles I could link to about this deplorable malpractice, but I’d rather let Wesley J. Smith’s passion speak for those of us who are outraged.

I feel like ripping my hair out! How can something like this happen in a civilized country? Martin Ryan, who could not swallow after a stroke, was allowed to lie in a bed and starve to death over a period of 26 days! And surprise, surprise–he had Down syndrome.

No small or incidental fact there. Read the whole blog post, and scroll down to the comments. They’re all good. This one makes a keenly astute point:

This scenario is the chief nightmare of those of us who are mothering a child with Down syndrome, a child whom the Nazis,and perhaps some British medical personnel deemed, “life unworthy of life”.
We kill 90% of these wonderful people before birth; is it so shocking that we also kill some after birth?

That’s the logical progression of a movement that legalizes and rationalizes the “right” to deem a whole class of human begins as unworthy of life.

Wesley is right on when he sounds the alarm:

That is why this must not be seen “merely” as a case of medical indifference. MUCH must be made of it in the UK. Urgently.

And in the US, where MSNBC’s Keith Olberman is spouting scorn and ridicule because of opposition to Obama naming a Michael Schiavo attorney to Justice. Talk about a communications breakdown…