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How come the people responsible for this NHS are not undergoing trial for manslaughter, and criminal negligence? With what putrid sense of ethics does the British Medical Association support MURDERERS? Because the murdered man was a SMOKER. It is OK to let smokers die, the criminal white mafia of BMA says: he's going to die, anyway! The medical obligation to save a life is now conditional to how a person is "taking care" of him/herself according to the political party line, and the GARBAGE SCIENCE these criminals mass-produce with tax-payers' money! The BMA delinquents and the criminal anti-tobacco operatives and physicians MUST be prosecuted for these crimes, and they motivate us to fight even harder to make sure that they are secured to a jail -- and that JUSTICE IS DONE. £40,000 in compensation is just NOT ENOUGH. March 17 1999
THE widow of a man denied a heart bypass operation because he smoked five cigarettes a day has been given £40,000 in compensation. John Gibson, 59, died of a heart attack ten months after the last-minute cancellation of a triple-bypass operation at Southampton General Hospital, Hampshire. As he was being prepared for surgery, his surgeon had asked him whether he had given up smoking. When Mr Gibson replied "No" the doctor sent him home and told him that he could rejoin the NHS waiting list once he gave up. Mr Gibson went on the waiting list at a different NHS hospital, but was unable to undergo the surgery before he died in November 1993. His wife, Andrea, issued a writ against the Southampton and South West District Health Authority. The authority has agreed to an out-of-court settlement, but maintains that while Mr Gibson continued to smoke doctors considered that the risks of operating on him were too high. Mrs Gibson said: "It was a devastating blow when he was turned down for the surgery and John was never the same again. When he died I lost everything - my husband and then my house.I am relieved that at last this whole unpleasant affair is over." Mr Gibson had a history of health problems. He had smoked 20 cigarettes a day, but cut down to five when told he needed the operation. Mrs Gibson, of Alton, Hampshire, said: "He was so nervous about the operation and was very determined to give up so he wouldn't be put in the same situation again. "I don't think he could believe [the operation] had been stopped at the last minute and I don't think he could face going through it all again." "He went back on the waiting list at the Royal Brampton Hospital in London where he had more tests in June but died in the November." Mr Gibson, an independent car trader who ran a letting agency with his wife, had previously always gone to a private hospital. "He could have had the operation a week after the first tests for £11,000 but at the time we couldn't afford it and so went on the NHS," Mrs Gibson said. "The one time that he relied on the NHS he was let down abysmally." The settlement with the health authority was reached without any acceptance of liability. A spokesman said: "The trust rejects allegations that this patient was refused treatment. His operation was deferred until he gave up smoking because the risks of operating while he continued to smoke were considered too high by the doctors. "The decision. . .was backed by the British Medical Association." Simon Clark, a spokesman for the smokers' group FOREST, said: "Smokers are entitled to the same care and compassion as non-smokers. We can only hope that this case emphasises the considerable financial penalties which hospitals may face if they fail to treat smokers equally."
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