'Totally immoral and outrageous!'

"Totally immoral, outrageous and totally unethical!" Prof. Stephen Brincat, chairman of the oncology department of Boffa Hospital, is right. His indignation expressed that which thousands of people felt after reading The Times' front page story last Thursday.

In her report Ariadne Massa informed us that the Union of Nurses and Midwives president Paul Pace defended his union's directive that the nurses at Boffa Hospital should deny treatment to a patient with advanced cancer whom the union deems to be a "health hazard".

The issuing of the directive was a shameful act. Pace's union must have felt this shame so much so that the union did not publicise it. Had it not been for The Times we would not have known about it.

But there is something much more shameful than the directive itself. Defending the directive and saying that it will be applied if the patient returns to hospital is worse than shameful. It is simply disgusting.

In this case we are talking about a person who, in actual fact, is dying of cancer.

How can any union, especially a union of people who consider themselves members of the caring professions, bully a dying person?

How can a nurse be directed to act against the interest of a patient, and one in such a state of vulnerability? How can nurses betray in such a blatant way their noble mission?

Prof. Brincat is quite right to base his comments on the moral and ethical dimension of the issue.

After all, all our actions have such a dimension. It is the duty of all nurses to defy such an immoral directive. Whatever the circumstances of the case it is never acceptable to act against the interest of patients. Some other remedy should have been found, if there is need for a remedy.

At the time of writing it seemed that the fate of the 120 migrants drifting aimlessly without water or fuel in the Libyan rescue zone was going to be positively resolved. Italy agreed to send a warship to save them.

The first thing that can be described as immoral and outrageous is the Libyan government's attitude. It totally reneged on its legal obligations and abandoned the humane feeling which characterises any decent human person.

But we were not all that shocked when the Libyans behave with such disregard for human life and dignity. We have come to expect it.

Also outrageous and immoral were the several comments posted by Maltese people on local blogs. It is unbelievable to read comments saying, among other things, that we should have done nothing about the drifting migrants because we were not legally obliged to do so.

The attitude of some people towards these fellow human beings was to let them drown if need be.

How low can some people stoop! How can they sleep at night? How can they pretend to be Christians?