New photo How utterly terrifying they’ll pull the plug on your life support... because of your Facebook

How often have you dashed off an email, only to re-read it months or years later and shake your head in disbelief that you’d ever written it?

Or posted your thoughts on social media about a topical issue, only to have an entirely different opinion after mulling it over a little longer?

Our brains are highly sophisticated computers, constantly assessing and re-assessing the data we feed in — and influenced, of course, by the physiological and emotional reactions of our bodies.

We change our minds all the time as a result, so our digital histories are littered with things we no longer believe and express feelings we no longer have.

But now this has taken on a horrifying new dimension. To put it starkly, one Facebook post might be enough to bring about your death. Stock pic

But now this has taken on a horrifying new dimension. To put it starkly, one Facebook post might be enough to bring about your death. 

Yes, it’s like something out of a dystopian novel. But it’s all the more chilling because it is true and is actually being recommended by the medical establishment.

This week the British Medical Association, no less, released guidance recommending that the relatives of patients who are so ill they cannot make a decision for themselves, and who have no prospect of recovery, should trawl through those patients’ Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts or emails for references to death, to help reach a decision on whether to withdraw treatment or switch off life support.

This guidance — which quite frankly appals me — follows a test case last October in which a High Court judge ruled that a 74-year-old woman in a coma could have her feeding tubes removed.

He made his decision because, in an email to her daughter written in 2013, the woman had referred to her own father who had suffered with dementia before his death. 

‘I am still haunted by how he ended up...’ she wrote. ‘Get the pillow ready if I get that way! Love Mum.’

This guidance — which quite frankly appals me — follows a test case last October in which a High Court judge ruled that a 74-year-old woman in a coma could have her feeding tubes removed. Stock pic

The unnamed woman was known to be a heavy drinker and is thought to have watched a documentary about dementia just before she sent the email. The judge decided, however, that her comment was not a ‘throwaway’ remark.

Now, I have no ideological objection to treatment being withdrawn from seriously ill patients who will never get better and cannot communicate their wishes.

I believe the job of a doctor is to alleviate suffering, not extend life unquestioningly. 

And there are certain situations — suffering chronic pain that cannot be managed and with no hope of reprieve, or being completely paralysed, for example — when I would not want to live and indeed would consider it cruel of others to proactively extend my life in any way.

But I have made my feelings clear to my family and loved ones on this issue, and I trust that if they had to decide on switching off my ventilator or removing feeding tubes, they know me well enough to make the right judgment call.

What I wouldn’t want is some doctor deciding to flip the switch or pull a tube because of something I’d once written in an email.

We are all prone to hyperbole, exaggeration and overstatement for effect. I’m sure we’ve all said or written, at one time or another, that ‘I’d rather die than do such and such . . .’ Of course we didn’t actually mean it.

We change our minds all the time as a result, so our digital histories are littered with things we no longer believe and express feelings we no longer have. Stock pic

Yet how might this be interpreted if I were on a ventilator? Could some humourless ‘tick-box’ medic fail to grasp the way it was intended and instead assume this was my laissez-faire attitude to life and therefore evidence I wanted to die?

The BMA’s guidelines are particularly worrying because, following a Supreme Court ruling in July last year, doctors are able to withdraw feeding tubes (known as ‘clinically assisted nutrition and hydration’ or CANH) without having to seek approval from a judge, as they once did. 

They must consult with families, but in reality it means even more of these complex ethical decisions are now essentially in the hands of medics.

There are already several options for those of us who feel strongly about end-of-life decisions. 

We can make a Living Will that outlines what we do and don’t want to happen in the event of us being incapacitated, and there are various organisations and websites to help us document our wishes. 

Or we can appoint a health and welfare attorney who has the power to order doctors to end a life in certain circumstances.

However, most of us don’t consider these options or make the most of the information resources because we never really think we’ll be affected — until we are. 

And isn’t that the whole point? Few of us ever give serious consideration to what we would want our families to do if we became incapable of deciding for ourselves whether we wanted to live or die.

So how on earth can some careless posts taken out of context on social media, or flippant emails, possibly be assumed to be real reflections of what we think or feel in a specific, complex life-and-death situation?

The BMA’s official position is that it is opposed to all forms of assisted dying, but I would argue that these new guidelines suggest this is changing. Stock pic

In the course of my medical career, I have found that families and loved ones are, even allowing for their grief, very good at knowing what their partners or relatives would or wouldn’t want. 

Even if end-of-life care was never explicitly discussed, they have a sense of the person and I have always trusted this.

Now I worry that in the event of a disagreement between relatives and/or the medical profession, old posts or emails — as the BMA is advising — might be dug out as ‘evidence’ of someone’s wishes when they are nothing of the sort.

It is utterly perverse that while we are incredibly wary of assisted dying in this country precisely because of the risk of abuse of vulnerable people, these guidelines have been produced without any seeming awareness of how they might also be misused in certain situations. 

I am a member of the BMA — it is supposedly the trade union for the medical profession and is there to defend the interests of doctors. But I think the organisation has lost the plot.

Now its leaders prefer to weigh in on all manner of public health debates and ethical and social policy, not least because they know they will generate headlines in doing so.

The BMA has become a platform for a particular kind of pernicious Left-wing and ‘progressive’ mindset by people who are using the union to push forward their own political ideologies and their own version of medical ethics — and that, I believe, includes a heavily pro-euthanasia stance.

The BMA’s official position is that it is opposed to all forms of assisted dying, but I would argue that these new guidelines suggest this is changing.

After the 2018 Supreme Court ruling, confidential BMA draft guidance was leaked suggesting that doctors should be able to end the lives not only of patients who are in a minimally conscious (vegetative) state, but also patients with dementia or other degenerative disease if they can’t feed themselves.

This is euthanasia by stealth. Many of my colleagues feel the same. The new guidelines are yet another horrifying step in that direction.

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News Pictures How utterly terrifying they’ll pull the plug on your life support... because of your Facebook

You don’t have to pack away your bikini just because you’re the wrong side of 20. These body-beautiful stars reveal their secrets to staying in shape and prove you can smoulder in a two-piece, whatever your age. Read on and be bikini inspired!

TEENS
Hayden Panettiere
Size: 8
Age: 18
Height: 5ft 1in
Weight: 8st

To achieve her kick-ass figure, Hayden – who plays cheerleader Claire Bennet in Heroes – follows the ‘quartering’ rule. She eats only a quarter of the food on her plate, then waits 20 minutes before deciding whether she needs to eat again.

Hayden says: “I don’t have a model’s body, but I’m not one of those crazy girls who thinks that they’re fat. I’m OK with what I have.”

Nicollette says: “I don’t like diets – I see it, I eat it! I believe in eating healthily with lots of protein, vegetables and carbs to give you energy.”

kim cattrall

Size: 10-12
Age: 52
Height: 5ft 8in
Weight: 9st 4lb

SATC star Kim swears by gym sessions with Russian kettle bells (traditional cast-iron weights) and the South Beach Diet to give her the body she wants. To avoid overeating, Kim has a radical diet trick – squirting lemon juice on her leftovers – so she won’t carry on picking.

Kim says: “I am no super-thin Hollywood actress. I am built for men who like women to look like women.”
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/01/03/00/8069560-6550157-image-a-4_1546474154491.jpg