DAILY MAIL (London)

April 3, 2000
SECTION: Pg. 19
LENGTH: 541 words
HEADLINE: Elderly 'condemned to death so hospital beds can be freed'
BYLINE: Adam Powell
BODY:
HOSPITAL staff are hastening the deaths of elderly patients to release urgently
needed beds, an NHS doctor claimed yesterday.
Dr Rita Pal, 28, said acutely ill patients are denied lifesaving drugs, left without
proper care and given fatal doses of painkillers.
Now she is quitting medicine, saying she has lost faith in the profession after
witnessing her former colleagues pursue a policy of 'involuntary euthanasia'.
She claims to have seen consultants withdraw treatment from seriously ill patients
to speed up their death on half a dozen occasions in six months, and staff give potentially
lethal doses of diamorphine the medical name for heroin.
Dr Pal, whose father is a retired surgeon and whose two elder sisters are both
consultants, is so disturbed by her experiences that she is blowing the whistle on what
sees as 'morally wrong' practice.
She has compiled a dossier of her concerns, with specific examples, which she will
give to the General Medical Council (GMC) this week, and wants the Government to set
up an independent inquiry to investigate her allegations.
'I have witnessed doctors who want to keep beds clear withdrawing treatment or
actively assisting in death to the point where it becomes involuntary euthanasia,' she said
yesterday at her home in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.
'The consultants will justify it as merciful killing. It is not murder.
But the balance of their decisions is based on the factors that the patients are old,
there is a shortage of beds, a shortage of staff, and the patients' quality of life. It is a
process of decision-making which is unethical.' Dr Pal, who trained at University College
medical school, London, joined the North Staffordshire hospital trust in 1998. She
worked on two general wards at the City General hospital in Stoke- on-Trent for six
months.
She has done locum work in five other hospitals around the country.
In her dossier Dr Pal, details specific allegations. These include: A consultant at
Stoke's City General hospital who ordered staff to withdraw lifesaving drugs from a
stroke victim saying: 'We need the bed, stop all medication.' A doctor who did not help a
patient dying of a liver complaint, but commented, 'Well, he is over sixty'. The man was
transferred to another hospital where an intensive care bed was available but died.
A diabetic woman in her 80s who was left without treatment because a nurse

decided 'she will die anyway'.

Doctors prescribing 'unnecessary' doses of diamorphine to critically-ill patients to
speed up their deaths.
Dr Pal said: 'Decisions are made on elderly patients to treat with a lack of concern,
to withdraw treatment, to prescribe diamorphine more frequently than for a younger
person with the same condition, and with concern to obtain beds as fast as possible,
because "they are going to die anyway so what is the point of treating them?"' Last night
a spokesman for the Worcester Royal Infirmary, where Dr Pal alleged a man with a
serious liver condition was not treated, said all appropriate procedures had been followed.
A spokesman for the North Staffordshire Trust said all Dr Pal's specific and general
criticisms had been investigated but not upheld.

GRAPHIC: DR RITA PAL: DOSSIER OF ALLEGATIONS

LOAD-DATE: April 4, 2000