The staff at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in the U.K. had a nickname for the Daedalus Ward. They called it the “Dead Loss” ward because so many of the patients assigned to it died untimely deaths. From 1989 to 2000, it’s also where medical staff at the hospital pursued a mercenary policy of euthanasia, killing patients by administering overdoses of opioids and other drugs in what a recently issued independent investigation into the hospital’s practices called an “institutionalized regime.”
The panel found “a disregard for human life and a culture of shortening the lives of a large number of patients” at the hospital. As the Right Reverend James Jones, KBE, the head of the investigatory panel, notes, “The shocking outcome of the Panel’s work is that we have now been able to conclude that the lives of over 450 patients were shortened while in the hospital.” Some critics have suggested the number is much higher.
Many of the victims were admitted to the hospital with recoverable conditions such as a broken bone. Elsie Devine was one such patient; the 88-year-old grandmother went to Gosport to recover from a mild infection; a few weeks later, she was dead, the victim of a powerful and medically unnecessary cocktail of fentanyl and diamorphine. The same was true of 78-year-old Ethel Thurston; sent to Gosport to recover from a fractured femur, she was labeled “aggressive” by nursing staff because she wouldn’t eat the hospital food and “has been known to strike staff.” Nurses noted her treatment: “Syringe driver started diamorphine 90 mg. Midazolam 20 mg.” She was dead by that evening.
It was only through the tireless efforts of victims’ families that the situation at Gosport was finally revealed, but it was evidently an open secret among the people who worked there. As the London Times reported, one nurse who had worked at Gosport told local police, “It appeared to me then and more so now that euthanasia was practiced by the nursing staff.” So common was the practice that, as the Guardian reported, hospital staff often joked among themselves about especially difficult patients. “We agreed that if he wasn’t careful,” they said of an annoying patient, “he would ‘talk himself into a syringe driver.’ ” The patient was later euthanized.
Dr. Jane Barton, the physician responsible at Gosport, frequently delegated killing duties to her staff. According to the Guardian, she wrote the following on Thurston’s file: “Please make comfortable. I am happy for nursing staff to confirm death.” Although she was disciplined for her role in the deaths of 12 patients, Barton never faced criminal charges or lost her medical license. Now retired, Barton delegated to her husband the task of responding to the recent investigation. As the BBC reported, he read the following statement: “She has always maintained she was a hardworking, dedicated doctor—doing the best for her patients in a very inadequately resourced part of the health service.”
While the British government reckons with the meaning of Gosport (Prime Minister Theresa May apologized to the families of the victims and called the situation “tragic” and “deeply troubling”) the case has relevance beyond the U.K. We often repeat that ideas have consequences, but euphemisms have consequences, too: their use can mask many evils. Euphemism was the argot at Gosport. Patient files included notes such as, “this patient is for palliation” and “please make comfortable,” when what was meant was “terminate.” Even the independent panel’s report on Gosport avoids using words such as “murder” and “killing,” instead trafficking in such doublespeak as “shortening the lives” and “terminal care pathways.”
The embrace of euphemism at Gosport appears to have encouraged an understanding of human life as a qualitative resource whose value could be abstracted, measured, and acted upon accordingly (thus Dr. Barton’s self-serving complaint about “inadequate resources”). Such a worldview might deem a life less worth saving when it comes in the form of, say, a grumpy old man with bedsores seeking to extend his stay at a rehabilitation hospital that is struggling with budget cuts. The fate of patients at Gosport offers a stark reminder that you can judge a society’s values by how it treats its most vulnerable members, particularly children, the elderly, and the disabled. Given the rapidly aging populations of many countries, including the United States, our approach to taking care of the vulnerable should reflect our values, not numbers on a balance sheet.
The findings at Gosport also have implications for the way we discuss assisted suicide.
There is growing support for doctor-assisted suicide in the United States. A May 2018 Gallup poll found that 72 percent of Americans think a doctor should be allowed to help a terminally ill patient die as long as the doctor has the patient’s and family’s consent; 54 percent said doctor-assisted suicide was “morally acceptable.” Approval rates were highest among self-described liberals and Democrats and lowest among weekly churchgoers.
The Gosport case suggests we might want to be very cautious about embracing assisted suicide as a moral advance. Supporters of the practice traffic in the same language employed by Gosport’s eager euthanasiasts, often citing the alleviation of suffering and the desire to make people “comfortable” at the end of life. They appeal to individual autonomy and choice, which is why they call it a “right” to die. But rights arise in particular cultural contexts. The assumption of right-to-die advocates is that the quality of a life determines its worth (and thus when it should end). In this view, aging and illness are understood as burdens (on one’s family or care-givers or society ) rather than a normal, if often challenging, part of being human.
It was a community of surviving family members that ultimately brought the murders at Gosport to the public’s attention. That community’s demands for justice for their loved ones serves as a reminder that even free and prosperous societies must guard against a mindset that views the weakest among us as a burden. All of us, because we are human, will at times be a burden to others. And all of us, if we want to retain our humanity, should find it within ourselves to bear such burdens.
