Want To See The Future Of Nationalized Health Care? Look To England

Sentiments would have a credit card. Clearly seminal to what goes on in Christianity.

In terms of the thing. The life of the individual is family policy with NC family Pres. John Preston thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. Today we are joined by one of North Carolina's leading medical voices calling for a return to a sanctity of life ethic and medical care are just today is Dr. Marty McCaffrey, a clinical professor in neonatal and perinatal medicine at UNC Chapel Hill and Dir. of the perinatal quality collaborative of North Carolina, Dr. McCaffrey, welcome back to family policy matters is great to have you on the show again. John, thanks very much for having me in it.

It's wonderful. It's great to be here. Dr. McCaffrey, your job involves really walking with parents through some of the most difficult scenarios a parent can face. For example, a diagnosis that a child in utero is having significant difficulties or may be born with a severe medical condition or disease. Having experienced this firsthand on numerous occasions.

What perspective do you have on the topic of abortion as it relates to situations where pregnancy is Dean is. Some physicians like to characterize it incompatible with life and it's an increasingly common situation that families are put in now, John for a variety of reasons. We've gotten really quite expert at what we can do with ultrasound and with surveying babies before birth. We also have begun just a myriad of new testings that we can do on maternal blood samples. Looking at the genetic makeup of babies. I think regarding the latter were really in the infancy, so to speak of developing the expertise necessary to really understand what these tests mean those tests have their challenges but I think the notion that infants certain babies were yet to be born have conditions which are incompatible with life is really a difficult one to prove. I think there absolutely are conditions which will lead babies to have short lives.

I think there absolutely are conditions which babies have, which may make those lives measured in minutes or hours or days or weeks, but we've all is physicians and providers who work in this area offered different types of counseling for families with children with difficult prenatal diagnoses and we've we've all thought that we know pretty well what was going to happen with it, but it's not infrequent that were proven wrong and I think what often gets lost in the scientific rush to really examine what's going on physiologically with an unborn baby is that we oftentimes fail to realize that this is a very unique sacred life and you mentioned sanctity of life initially in your opening there and it I think that's absolutely true. I think we have moved and I would say not involved but devolved to a standard where we don't look at every life as individually sacred in inherent with its own unique dignity.

I think where we've moved is a point where things are a bit more relativistic and we feel that we have the ability to judge not only what survivals might be. But what quality of life may be, and then we have the temptation to go ahead and advise families based on those judgments which are very often personal judgments for us about what the future might hold and advise families regarding the possibility of terminating a pregnancy I think would also get floss and that is we fail to realize when we've diagnosis a difficult prenatal condition is that families are now confronted with several really critical elements one they've gotta mourn the loss of what probably is going to be the child that they thought they were going to have it now will not have. So whether it's a different difficult chromosomal diagnosis or a child with a difficult heart problem that might require multiple surgeries to survive. Dave now got a very different child with very different expectations. Then when you make the next leap and this not infrequently happens within the same conversation which is just inconceivable to me offering a family termination for pregnancy you've gone from saying not only is your child not the child that you thought it might be, and that the dreams that you had are not the dreams are going to be realized. Now you are asking of family, a mother to decide whether her love is conditional and whether she should end a pregnancy that she is bonded with with the child that she has been lovingly been growing inside of her. Based on the fact that the child has difficulties or prenatal condition, which may cause the life to be different shortened and may cause her at that point to make a decision that she might have to consider ending that life. McCaffrey states that a doctor will do no harm.

In your opinion, is that still the prevailing approach to medicine today or has it come to mean something else entirely within the medical community. Well, I think you know it's interesting bring up the Hippocratic oath, so do no harm is not actually in the Hippocratic but the Hippocratic oath does clearly and explicitly state John is that you will not participate in abortion, you will not participate in euthanasia and so if we were all taking the Hippocratic oath and abiding by gosh, you would hope that people would be working in a in a medical environment that would really appreciate and see the sanctity of individual life. What is really going on is the Hippocratic oath has fallen out of fashion.

So there was a survey done back in 2009 and they pulled through over 140 at the time medical schools to see what they were using for a graduation of only 11% using the Hippocratic oath to majority were using some other variety of an oath and there's 2 to 3 other varieties added out there that were most common. All of them deemphasized worked out well. They don't even mention euthanasia or abortion specifically in all of them deemphasized the individual sanctity of life and the dignity of the individual as it applicable he applies across humanity. So the even the oaths have started to reflect what sort of is the new bioethics, which is much more relativistic and is separated from the traditional bioethics school that really started disappearing back in the 70s. Paul Ramsey was a Christian bioethicist who really echoed the Hippocratic oath mean obviously Hippocrates existed long before Christianity did, but the sentiment that Hippocratic oath are clearly seminal to what goes on in Christianity.

In terms of the sanctity of the life of the individual we move now to something that is much more relativistic in terms of the commonly accepted bioethical mantras you're listening to a resource and to listen to our radio show online and resources that will be a place of persuasion in your community website only alleging what you talking about a very specific situation that many of our listeners. I'm sure have heard about and that is the situation with young Charlie guard an 11-month-old baby whose parents have been thwarted by the government in England in their attempts to switch medical providers in order to gain access to things like experimental treatments talk little bit about this case and how do you interpret what's going on in England with respect to Charlie guard will I think what's going on in England with Charlie guard really should be critical to all of us here in the states, and certainly around the world. What you're seeing in action in England is the fruits of the national health service, which is been in place since the late 1940s.

So England has been laboring under the burden of a nationalized healthcare system for heading on 70 some years now at this point and I just recently returned from a trip to England.

I was over there speaking at a trisomy 18 conference that was held, then monitored by a grandmother of a child that I've been working with over in the UK for the past two years. This little girl was an amazing beautiful little girl who has some significant airway issues, obstructive airway issues but also has trisomy team, which is commonly referred to as quote unquote lethal quit "incompatible with life, which is really not the case at all. If one looks at the current literature but this little girl with a lot of work on the part of this family, and advocacy from family and other groups over in England with will actually get a tracheostomy and this little girl is the first would trisomy 18 to get a tracheostomy in the UK. I went over there and it did a talk over there.

Anna and I had really kind of it at a disheartening and terrifying little view into the world of the NHS. When I spoke over there. The physicians and the doctors and many of the healthcare providers who were taking care of this little girl attended attended the lectures and it was two of us from the states were lecturing over there and prior to my lecture. One of the physicians came up and spoke with me as a senior doctor at the hospital. They are very well respected senior physician and he actually had been in charge of this childcare for a number of months and had initially been resistant to the thought of a tracheostomy, but ultimately it was his support that allowed it to go forward and he came forward to me and he said you know I have to talk to about this case. If they were sure let let's have a conversation you said you know start the conversation with this John. He said you know I like the little girl and I thought that was a shocking waste (either well I hope you would.

She's beautiful. Her family is wonderful and she's your bases, but yes, yes, all that but you know she's got a very difficult of difficult problem and we were trying to go along in and I looked in a method assuming she was going to die right and is well we were trying to go along but you know, the family would not give up and we were doing lots of things for airway support, but I knew none of them were was going to work and that she needed a tracheostomy and he said you know, but ultimately what forced the hand was the knowledge that this family was going to bring us to court if they brought court ready to fly this Dr. over from America would been working with them and we would lose in court admissible. Why would you lose it because it was the right thing to do and John at that point he looked at me. I was looking into his eyes and I felt like I was looking into the eyes of a battered spouse. He said Marty you've got to understand, we don't have any more money. We have no money. We are being forced to be gatekeepers for expenses in this healthcare system and we have to think were forced to think about quality adjusted life years and what the impact is going to be potentially on the rest of the people in the system and what it's going to mean for our children down the road when now I have children who have airway obstruction would trisomy want to get a tracheostomy in long-term care. He said how do you afford it in your country. I said well it gets paid for is paid for at this point by Medicaid words paid for by private insurers. If we deem it the reasonable thing to do. But you know honestly we haven't been laboring under a single law provider healthcare system like you have for 75 years and you guys are absolutely broke now interested. Margaret Thatcher was right and you're seeing the end result of that, this is the corner that your forced into were not quite there yet.

Although we are, you know, in many ways were well down the road to single-payer system but were not a single provider system. In this distinction to be made there.

John single payer Obama care to close well down that road.

I'm not sure any of the political parties at this point really have the courage to trying change that necessarily life but were not a single provider system. So in the UK on the government calls the shots.

The NHS calls the shots for everything from how much doctors are paid what nurses are paid. Everything is unionized, what staffing looks like where hospitals will be built where they will not be built, and so this is a very different system so single-payer the movement down the road towards an Obama care type system is really the next step down the road to a single provider system which is really I think the goal of some receipt is nirvana at having spent a very short amount of time in this hospital for a day and 1/2. I'm over in the UK about a week and 1/2 ago and looking into the eyes of those providers. I can tell you it is not Nirvana. It's not nirvana for the providers.

It's not nirvana for the patience to listen to part one of the discussion with Dr. Marty McCaffrey, director of the perinatal quality collaborative Carolina. I encourage you to tune in the same policy matters next week or two of this engaging discussion. Thank you for listening Symington policy matters to listen to our radio show online resources and information about issues important to families and Carolina website family.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook