In today's Wall Street Journal there was an article about hepatitis C, and they talked about "warehousing patients," meaning deferring treatment in hopes of a better therapy that might come along.

Have you heard of that before? I sure had not.

I've never heard it. What an unfortunate phrase!

I've heard it, but in the context of ignoring patients rather than deferring treatment.

The UK is not immune to this. My email friend Paul B. of Gloucestershire had a special needs son whose needs were ignored while in a NHS facility and he died. According to Paul, it was found that his problem was not unique, and quite a stink arose as a result, with MPs being involved, and it was on national news. This was about seven years ago, IIRC.

Well, this was actually a good thing. That is, the current therapy is so intrusive, that the health care providers decide whether patients can wait for possible new treatments.

Can't they think of a better name for the process, though? "Wharehousing" has implications of storing away and we all know the saying, "out of sight, out of mind".

This was certainly an "out of signt, out of mind" situation: http://www.4ni.co.uk/northern_...nd_news.asp?id=91243

Warehousing reminds me of the Robin Cook novel, Coma, later made into a movie. A coma is induced in patients during surgery. They are then declared brain dead and put in an intensive care facility. The facility is essentially a medical warehouse where the patients are suspended from the ceiling and kept alive until their organs can be harvested and sold on the black market.

Well, there are induced comas for medical reasons.