Briefing Paper on the Right to Life
Discrimination has gone so deep it threatens our right to life.
INTRODUCTION
‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’ is the third article of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the first article that actually
stipulates a right, rather than making an ethical statement.
Increasingly, in this age of scientific advances in health care and genetics, ethical
decisions are being made as to how these advances should be used and who
should receive treatment.
Almost daily medical practitioners are making cost-cutting decisions as to who
should receive a life-saving treatment and who should not.
The scientists and pharmaceutical companies advertise their advances in terms of
therapy and the elimination of disease and suffering.
Worldwide, the pursuit is on for physical and mental perfection and for individual
happiness.
However glorious it may sound this pursuit is a dangerous game. Anyone who
does not conform to the idea of perfection or who is not straining for happiness
becomes socially unacceptable.
It becomes morally and ethically sound to eliminate these so-called imperfections
from the human genome and to ensure that the public purse is not wasted on
those imperfect lives that appear to have no quality.
We are becoming aware in the UK of an ever-increasing number of disabled
people who have been allowed to die through lack of treatment or resuscitation or
have been deliberately killed through abortion or euthanasia.
In many societies in the past, people from a different race were seen as
unacceptable and were eliminated, either through war or deliberate genocide. Up
until 1998, parents in China were encouraged to abort girl foetuses and still, in
some countries, girl babies are left to starve.
The world society decries this as barbaric, as eugenics, as totally unacceptable.
Europe and the USA have recently taken up arms against what they considered
was eugenic behaviour (or ethnic cleansing, as it is now called) in Serbia.
Despite these fine responses to race and gender, disability and disabled people
are not included. In abortion, embryology, genetics, health treatment,
resuscitation, and euthanasia, policies and practices all deny disabled people or
disabled foetus the right to life.
ABORTION
In precisely the same law as China abolished abortion on the grounds of gender
in 1998, it imposed mandatory abortion of disabled foetuses and sterilisation on
disabled people.
In the UK and many other developed countries, abortion on the grounds of
gender or race has long been outlawed – but nearly all countries have selective
abortion times on the grounds of disability.
In the UK it is possible to have an abortion at any time until full term, if there is a
disability prognosis for the child.
EMBRYOLOGY
Many women are being able to give birth through the new techniques of embryo
research. This is excellent.
But when leading scientists use their techniques to ensure that only perfect
babies are born, or babies designed by the expectant parents, then eugenics is
being allowed to flourish.
Designer babies are already being formed in the US under embryo techniques.
As Dr. Edwards – the co-founder of IVF in the UK – said at an International
Conference this summer, “it would be immoral for parents involved in IVF to give
birth to a disabled child”.
NB. There was outrage when Glen Hoddle suggested that disability was the
reincarnation of sin – nobody from Government said a thing about Dr. Edwards.
GENETICS
Whatever the scientists or pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe,
genetic science is not advanced enough for ‘designer people’ to be a reality.
But the danger is that the possibility is being talked about. Society believes that it
is being morally responsible to eliminate all signs of disabling conditions from the
gene-line.
Of course this will not eliminate disabled people per se, people born with a
disabling condition are very much in the minority in the disabled population.
However this attitude is setting a precedent for other denials of the right to life
for disabled people. It also feeds on the considerable fears that parents have at
the thought of having a disabled child or that most people have of becoming a
disabled person themselves.
HEALTH-CARE
This violation of disabled people’s right to life is seen very clearly in many aspects
of healthcare today.
Much assessment on allocations of treatment and funding is based on ‘Quality
Adjusted Life Years’ or QALYS.
These form a control system whereby health professionals can justify their
funding decisions.
As the stereotype of a disabled person is someone who is unable to function
properly, is unemployable, unmarriageable etc.
QALYS are going to militate significantly against any chances of life-supporting
treatment.

Recent research from the Downs Syndrome Association showed that 40%
of people with Downs had been denied treatment because of their
impairment. The medical profession have often said that certain
treatments (such as heart transplants) would not be medically suitable
but in the USA where this argument has been challenged through the
Americans with Disabilities Act, it has been proved to be an excuse, not a
truth. One hospital in this country has been subject to an inquiry because
of an alleged denial of treatment regarding heart treatment. An internal
inquiry, hardly surprisingly, did not find any grounds for the allegation.

Research of use of the flu vaccine showed that 50,000 elderly patients
with senile dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in UK hospitals and nursing
homes are routinely denied the vaccine. This policy appears to be pursued
because medical staff believes that ‘a bout of pneumonia, associated with
flu, is a much more dignified way to die’.

54 elderly and visually impaired residents of New Wycliffe Home in
Leicester have been struck off GP lists because they ‘take up too many
resources’.
‘Quality of Life’ is also used as an excuse to allow someone to die through the
imposition of a Do Not Resuscitate Notice. Under present law these notices can
only be given by a doctor in a hospital setting. Unfortunately they are being used
in many other settings.

As you can see from the attached cases, a school for physically disabled
children wanted to be able to apply a DNR and a nurse at a Shaftesbury
home delayed an attempt to resuscitate a young man of 26 with Spina
Bifida, because of ‘the nature of Stephen’s physical disabilities…’

A 40 year-old woman who is Chair of a Government advisory committee
went into hospital with pneumonia last year and the doctor put a DNR
notice on her files, without her permission. Luckily it was not needed.

At least 50 elderly patients, hospitalised in the early 1990s with strokes,
asthma and dementia, died after intravenous drips were removed whilst
they were sedated. The drips were providing fluid and/or nourishment.
LETHAL TREATMENT
The case of David Glass is being taken by the police as a criminal case of
manslaughter.
What needs to be made clear is that diamorphine suppresses lung function. It is
never given when the lungs are already in distress or mal-functioning for any
reason.
Under those circumstances it is lethal unless an anti-dote is administered. This is
common medical knowledge.
There is much more anecdotal evidence from disabled individuals that they have
been given treatment that contra-indicated on their underlying condition because
apparently doctors could not be bothered to give alternative treatments or felt
that their lives were not worth saving any way.
What we do not know, of course, is how many have actually died because of
inappropriate treatment.
As far as infants born with obvious extreme impairments are concerned many
doctors will admit to ensuring that they do not survive.
Dame Mary Warnock quite openly praised her doctor father-in-law who routinely
left newly born babies to die.
THE WAY FORWARD
We need to gather more evidence. DAA has set up a worldwide violations
database that has already recorded a thousand cases in the UK, 10% of which
affect the right to life. Other organisations too are carrying out much needed
research.
We need to raise awareness. The debate on genetics and other bio-ethical issues
is intensifying.
Disabled people must make a significant contribution to this debate in order that
our difference and quality of life should not be used as a reason for our
elimination whilst at the same time ensuring that beneficial treatments are
available.
The Human Rights Act and the Disability Discrimination Act should both be
vehicles through which disabled individuals and their families could seek redress.
The Right to Life should be a matter of priority for the Disability Rights
Commission.
CONCLUSION
This violation of the right to life for disabled people is an extremely sensitive
topic, for both disabled people and the rest of society.
We wish to be seen as a humane society who cares for all its members.
The institutionalisation of discrimination against disabled people is now
acknowledged and as the years go by, disabilism will take its place alongside
racism and sexism.
However we need also to recognise that this discrimination has gone very deep
and has threatened our right to life.
If this becomes a point of debate and discussion then we will go some way to
solving the problem.
email: info@daa.org.uk