(LifeSiteNews) — A devastating new report from the U.K. broadcaster ITV on the treatment of people with disabilities revealed a 56-year-old man with Down syndrome, Adrian Poulton, was starved to death in an NHS hospital after being admitted in September 2021 with a broken hip after a fall. His hip was mending, but doctors listed him as “nil by mouth.”

“Nil by mouth” is a directive not to feed the patient by mouth. Poulton was given no food for nine days, while his family thought he was being given nutrition at Poole Hospital through a drip. “Not being medical, we just naturally thought he was having nutrition, a feed,” his father Derek Poulton told ITV. “But as it turns out, they were starving him.”

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At one point, his sister Lesley Bungay said, “He was really poorly. He did look at me and dad … he said to me, ‘Lesley, I don’t want to die.’ He knew he was going to die. It was just awful.” When they realized Adrian wasn’t being fed, he was past the point of recovery and died on September 28, 2021. The official hospital report concluded that “a lack of nutrition” led to his death, and the hospital offered condolences and stated that they “have implemented a number of changes following this and have shared these with the family.”

“In September, a government-ordered report found people with a learning disability are dying on average 20 years younger than the general population, and that almost 40% of deaths of learning-disabled people were deemed to be avoidable,” ITV reported. “Families and campaigners have also raised concerns over the sharp decline in specialist learning disability nurses, and training for NHS staff on learning disabilities and autism.”

A letter from 16 charities and disability campaigners will be sent to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, calling for intervention.

“The Learning Disability nursing workforce has declined by 43% since records began in 2009,” the letter reads. “If nothing changes, it is predicted by 2028 there will only be a tiny number of Learning Disability Nurses qualifying in England, with a pattern of reducing numbers in the other U.K. countries too. The profession is in crisis, and urgent intervention is needed to avoid imminent collapse.”

Tragedies like the death of Adrian Poulton are precisely why every disability rights group in the United Kingdom – and other countries – so fiercely oppose the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Medical institutions have a long and ugly history of practicing what amounts to proactive eugenics.

A decade ago, a U.K. hospital was forced to apologize for putting a man with Down syndrome on the “do not resuscitate” list without his permission and listing his learning difficulties as one of the reasons. An American study found that people with Down syndrome were six times more likely to be placed on a DNR list during the COVID crisis.

ITV reported that NHS England must do better to reach its targets for training staff; the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training program, established in 2022, is considered the gold standard. But the proactive decisions of medical staff to devalue the lives of people with disabilities go beyond mere misunderstanding in many cases and help explain why medical institutions have not prioritized such training in the first place.

“People with a learning disability are still dying from the same conditions and the same failures,” campaigner Paula McGowan told ITV. “The government needs to do an awful lot more. These people matter. And I would question why our government don’t see it the same way.”

In 2023, 17-year-old Louis Cartright, who has Down syndrome, was taken to the hospital after he fell ill. Over ten days he was seen by three doctors, but was anxious at the prospect of having blood taken. Doctors didn’t think he was ill enough to warrant sedation for a blood test, and so Cartright was left untreated. The usually healthy boy worsened. His mother found him on the floor on February 3, 2023.

“He was saying mumbled sentences, which we could work out,” his mother Jackie said. “I went over to him … I picked him up, and he fell into my arms, and he died.” The inquest at the South London Coroner’s Court is still ongoing, and the family still does not have answers. “It was from the start that things went wrong for him,” his mother said. “He didn’t even access basic healthcare. He was just white …  As I was in the hospital, looking at him, I had all the overwhelming fear of what this could be, because actually, Louis was never ill.”

“He’d never even had COVID. He very rarely gets a cold, he never had a tummy bug. He was a super healthy kid,” she continued. “This is the problem when you’re a mum of a child with a disability. Everything is 20 million times harder than for anybody else. You’re hitting brick walls constantly. You’re fighting all the time to get anything. It’s a constant, battle, battle, battle, battle. You’re just resigned to the fact, here we go again. Another difficulty. Another excuse.” The coroner has not been unable to determine why Louis died.

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“They’re saying they’ve done everything they could have done for Louis. We don’t believe that’s true,” his father Ian told ITV. “He had a disability, he had Down syndrome, he was a frightened kid. They could have done something, and they refused to.” Jackie added: “None of it makes any sense. I’m not going to be able to process this, ever. I’m just completely devastated and shocked. If he had been a 17-year-old boy who articulated he did not feel well, he would not have been sent home from the hospital. Louis was allowed to die due to his disability.”

It is important to acknowledge that there are many medical professionals who fight heroically for the lives of people with disabilities. But it is also true that the U.K.’s abortion legislation banned abortion at 24 weeks – unless the baby in the womb was diagnosed with Down syndrome, in which case the parents could have the baby killed up until birth. Ableism is an ugly fact of Western healthcare, and to legalize assisted suicide in the U.K. would be to make the NHS even more dangerous for those with disabilities.