A June 18, 2020 article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Coronavirus is taking a high toll on Sweden’s elderly. Families blame the government”  starts with a disturbing story:

“When 81-year-old Jan Andersson fell ill with Covid-19 at a nursing home in the Swedish town of Märsta, a doctor consulted by phone ordered palliative care, including morphine, instead of trying to help him fend off the infection.

Mr. Andersson’s son, Thomas Andersson, says he was told his father was too frail for other treatment. The younger man disagreed and, after arguing with the physician, summoned journalists and insisted his father be given lifesaving care. Mr. Andersson has since recovered.

The county that runs Mr. Andersson’s nursing home said all decisions on medical treatment for the residents were made by doctors employed by a company that provides medical services. (All emphasis added)

The Wall Street Journal reports that cases like this have sparked a public outcry from not only relatives but also from some doctors and nurses. There is now an investigation by Swedish national health-care authorities into the treatment of older patients in nursing homes and Stockholm hospitals. There are now 5,041 people in Sweden who have died from Covid 19 with about half being nursing home residents.

“Many people have died unnecessarily,” said Yngve Gustafson, a geriatric-medicine specialist in Sweden, who looked into more than 200 cases in which people were denied care. He said that doctors were too quick to put patients on palliative care. He also said that he believed many would have survived and lived year longer had they been provided basic care.

Furthermore, a June 12, 2020 British Medical Journal article “Has Sweden’s controversial covid-19 strategy been successful?” stated that Dr. Gustafson also spoke to the Svebsja Dagbladet newspaper and “expressed concern about the increasing practice of doctors recommending by telephone a “palliative cocktail” for sick older people in care homes.

He also was quoted as saying:

“Older people are routinely being given morphine and midazolam, which are respiratory-inhibiting,” … “It’s active euthanasia, to say the least.”

Thomas Linden, chief medical officer of Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare, said the triage guidelines for Covid 19 were developed to prepare the health-care system for a potential crisis while ensuring best-possible treatment for all patients.

However, the Wall Street Journal article reports that Swedish critics say these guidelines have too often resulted in older patients being denied treatment, even when hospitals were operating below capacity.

“Dr. Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, a physician at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, said that “the ICU wards were comparatively empty “because elderly people were not taken to hospitals—they are given sedatives but not oxygen or basic care.”

The Wall Street Journal article also notes that “About 90% of nursing-home residents who succumbed to Covid-19 in Sweden were never admitted to a hospital, according to official estimates. ” (Emphasis added)

Most poignantly, Latifa Löfvenberg, a nurse  for a company providing medical services to several nursing homes, said she sought treatment for residents with Covid-19 and was told by company physicians to administer morphine and a sedative.

She  described what happened:

“People suffocated, it was horrible to watch. One patient asked me what I was giving him when I gave him the morphine injection, and I lied to him,” said Ms. Löfvenberg, who is now working at a hospital in the Swedish capital. “Many died before their time. It was very, very difficult.” (Emphasis added)

COULD-OR HAS-THIS HAPPENED IN THE US?

As I wrote in my May 20, 2020 blog “Covid 19 and the Culture of Death” about the dangerous and unethical responses to Covid 19 in the US:

“(T)he National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) has a new resource for Crisis Standards of Care for the “ethical allocation of scarce medical resources during a disaster” that:

‘provides a framework for healthcare professionals to utilize a predetermined framework to determine which individuals will receive life saving care during an emergency event or disaster and which ones will not.’ With the event of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), it is important for palliative and hospice care providers to be familiar with Crisis Standards of Care.” (Emphasis added)

However, access to the actual crisis standards is restricted to NHPCO members only.

But transparency is not the only  problem.

Unfortunately, I have also personally and professionally seen cases of deliberate overdose sedation. I have written about this, most recently in my 2019 blog “When Palliative Care goes Horribly Wrong”.

CONCLUSION

While Sweden has not yet legalized physician-assisted suicide, Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare did authorize passive euthanasia in 2010, whereby “patients may request the termination of their treatment knowing that this will lead to their death”. This ruling came in response to a request by a 32 year old woman who was totally paralyzed and dependent on a ventilator since the age of six. She requested it be shut off when she was asleep. Whether or not she received a “palliative cocktail” beforehand is unknown.

Now, Swedish officials seem to have forgotten the part about “patient request” when it comes to Covid 19 and the elderly.

In the US, we started down a similar path when “right to die” groups focused on “living wills” and withdrawal of even basic treatment before outrightly promoting physician-assisted suicide.

The bottom line for any country is that we must not lethally discriminate against anyone, regardless of age or condition like Covid 19 and we must hold palliative care to the high standards set by the late Dame Cicely Saunders,  founder of hospice movement (1918 – 2005) who said:

“You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.” (Emphasis added)