Evening Press leader

Pensioner Jill Baker's traumatic hospital experience will frighten many older people awaiting treatment.

Mrs Baker was written off, quite literally, by doctors. When she demanded to see her medical notes, she came across the chilling words: "resuscitation would be inappropriate".

Mrs Baker and her husband were horrified by their discovery. No one at the hospital had talked to them about it. The junior doctor who wrote the note had taken a unilateral decision to let the 67-year-old cancer sufferer die.

What makes this story truly shocking is that it comes as no surprise to the medical profession. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Nick Harvey said today that health service staff had told him "this sort of thing goes on all the time, every day".

The public accepts that doctors make life or death decisions. They choose whether to revive a gravely ill patient based on a clinical judgement of whether they will recover to enjoy a reasonable quality of life.

But Mrs Baker's case was different. The decision to let her die was taken in advance, without her knowledge or consent. Therefore we must suspect it was based on the need to save scarce NHS resources rather than on medical grounds. That makes it one step removed from enforced euthanasia.

Age Concern said today that Mrs Baker's experience was becoming increasingly common. This is the most dreadful example of age discrimination imaginable.

Little thought has been given to the moral implications. If a young person has been in a "persistent vegetative state" for years, doctors must go to court to ask for the right to allow them to die. And yet older patients can be written off with a few words on their medical notes.

According to existing guidelines doctors must discuss resuscitation decisions with their patients. But this policy is ignored with terrifying regularity. The medical profession must be made fully aware that their power of life and death must never be exercised in this terrifyingly cavalier fashion.

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