The judge, and the doctors who informed him of the medical facts of the case, do know better than the parents what’s best for the kid. The parents what to do things that are, at best, pointless and at worst actively harmful to their child, because they have been lied to. and persuaded to ignore those facts.
Parents should not have the right to force their children to suffer. It is not just the right but the duty of the judge and the medical staff to act in the best interest of the child, regardless of what the parents think. Alfie is not a piece of property that they own.
What makes this so much worse is that those fighting to continue his suffering (if he’s still capable of suffering, which is doubtful but not certain) are supposedly christians. They supposedly believe that their god could cure him, but somehow hasn’t, and that he will go to a better place when he dies, but they want to delay that. They are disgusting hypocrites.
Ultimately it’s hard to blame the parents here. It’s clear that they are fighting for what they think is right, but it’s also clear that they are being horrendously used by the church and other pressure groups.
What mess! I think they should just discharge him, wish them the best and try out Italy. Italy says they’ll take him and treat him, so why not?
Well, it appears Alfie’s brain tissue that’s responsible for growth, senses, memory-- does not even show up on an MRI. He’s never going to wake up, sit up, smell, touch, taste…
If they want to try Italy, who am I to say no? But I think they should let him go painlessly. They should move on, have another kid. They’re 21 and 20 for Og’s sake.
You don’t know the details of the case, nor do I, nor does anyone in this thread. Anything you read about his condition will come purely from one side of that argument as the medical team will say absolutely nothing to the public.
The parents are not able to be objective about this, nor are the activists.
The only way to deal with difficult and tragic cases like this is to allow the medical experts and the courts to examine all the evidence and make the best bad choice they can with the welfare of the child taking absolute precedent.
I don’t envy them their lonely, thankless task because at the end of the day, whatever they do, there will be a dead child and grieving parents and they won’t look at this as a success of any kind.
But, a hearty fuck-you to those seeking to make religious or political capital out of this by exploiting Alfie condition and his parent’s situation…scum.
So, the child is suffering, right? What difference does it make that he’s suffering in the UK or Italy? It is just as much “false hope” that some UK judge orders a quick kill which is the only way to humanely kill someone. We don’t even kill murderers by starvation.
This is what I don’t understand about some people. Individually fine, but in groups or committees they lose all ability to reason. Front line medical people say no hope for the kid, I don’t have an issue with that. But no parent that I know is going to simply give up if there is an alternative present , even if its a hail mary option.
Give the parents the don’t sue us paperwork, and let them check out and fly to Italy. I don’t see what Italy can do that the UK can’t, but at least some compassion was shown.
Compassion for Alfie? The poor kid has been receiving state-of-the-art intensive care for pretty much his whole life (at no cost to his family), and you think it’s compassionate that he gets disconnected from all the machinery keeping his body alive so that he dies on a plane to Italy? Such compassion, wow.
I’ve had to argue to my family that a relative didn’t have enough heart muscle to go on, was already falling apart in the extremities, and that it was unfair to the hospital staff to refuse to let them disconnect the machines and stop medications (To what small amount that the relative was aware it was probably unfair to them as well.) It’s difficult.
I think that this needs to remain a private matter. My heart goes out to the Evans family and everyone directly involved in his care.
What has starvation got to do with anything? Or killing for that matter. No-one is suggesting killing him.
Anyway, the difference is that the UK has the responsibility to care for him, and the best care has been determined to be allowing him to die. Letting him fly to Italy when it’s been made clear that they will prolong the ineffective treatment would be a breach of that responsibility.
Now, factually, he is *probably *not actually suffering, as there seems to be too little brain left to even enable suffering. But if he can feel anything, it is certain to be pain. The reason it’s important to do the right thing and allow him to die is not so much because he’s suffering as for all the other people who needlessly suffer with terminal illness, whatever their age. It’s bad when adults are persuaded to continue needless suffering for no actual benefit. It’s disgusting when it’s done to children. If there is zero or negative quality of life, and no prospect of improvement, then forcing someone to continue enduring life is torture.
Far as I know, the plug has already been pulled and he is just hanging on. Compassion for the family maybe, the kid is probably hours away from passing on, I dont see the problem of letting the parents taking him to Italy, is this perhaps some sort of organ donor thing the medical establishment is thinking about, by allowing him to naturally pass on.
Disclaimer
I don’t know the UK laws regarding that, and what ever organs might be available to be harvested
From what I’ve read, any attempt to move him might actually kill him. Here’s some more details about the case.
Also the protestors are making a nuisance of themselves, barring the doors to people trying to get in to visit their loved ones, or worse, preventing ambulances from getting in. Even threats to burn down the hospital.
And it doesn’t help that a lot of people are using this case to advance their own causes.
As for, “he’d say he’d want to live”, do you think he’d want to live in this particular state? Are you really sure? :dubious:
As I said, neither you or I know the medical details but here’s a “what if”.
Let’s say he is suffering. You know that by moving him to Italy that suffering will only be prolonged and not relieved. A painful decline to an unavoidable death for someone who is in no position to make a decision for themselves and cared for by parents who, with the very best of intentions, would do pretty much anything to keep his body alive. You move him to Italy you prolong that suffering. You may think you are doing something for the parents, fine, but at least admit that you are putting their needs over Alfie’s and accept that the medical staff are representing his best interests.
by using the term “quick kill” you are demeaning and insulting the medical staff and stoking the fires unnecessarily. No-one is “killing” anyone.
The judgements are publicly available. I’ve just read the original judgement in full. My advice is that you don’t start reading until you’re somewhere you can weep freely, because you will. But I would strongly suggest reading at least the original judgement in full, plus the conclusions of the others, if you want a good understanding of this case.
The sole criterion used by the courts to determine the best course of action is what is in the best interests of Alfie. This has been the guiding principle throughout.
In the original judgement, the judge describes the tension inherent in the parents’ (particularly the father’s) attitude to the medical staff.
And also here:
It’s also worth noting that F who is only 21 or 22 now, left school at 16 to work as a plasterer. He acted as his own advocate and demonstrated a complete grasp of the issues and the science.
Since that original case, the family appears to have fallen under the influence of people who want to use Alfie as material for their pet cause. They are being given false legal advice from non-lawyers telling them that they can take Alfie out of hospital on their own say so. They are being induced to bring doctors into the hospital under false pretences. And they have even tried to accuse the medical staff of conspiracy to commit murder. Their desperation and grief are being played on by charlatans and fanatics in a way that will only add to their pain.
Wait, wha? Seriously? I don’t know how it works in the money factory of US medical establishments, but that is a ludicrous accusation to throw at the NHS.
And even if some rogue Dr Frankenstein was secretly plotting such an act, you can’t take organ donations without next of kin agreement in the UK.
I am no Christian or political friend of most of the people who’ve taken on this cause, but I admit I find this just a tiny bit bothersome.
“The best interest of the child” is not a legal principle that I think can be absolutely and universally used as justification for state intervention in a parent’s decision. It is obviously the case, I think, that a parents’ decisions, both overt and implicit, are quite often NOT in the best interests of a child. I would go so far as to say that there is not a parent on earth whose decisions are always in a child’s best interests, and quite often a parent will make decisions that that consciously and objectively not in a child’s best interests. I am a parent, and have made many decisions that probably - sometimes definitely - aren’t in my child’s best interests.
To have the state allowed to intervene in parental decisions that are not in the child’s best interests would be preposterous. I have fed my kid ridiculously unhealthy meals, allowed her to stay up late, lost my temper with her unnecessarily, been too permissive, let her watch too much TV and done any number of things I’d get a finger-wagging for from a nosy parent’s forum. In some cases my failures as a parent are more complex; Maddy isn’t doing great at school now, and it could be argued this is because her scholastic performance wasn’t managed correctly. Her parents divorced, which is certainly not great for her. But for all that she’s a healthy child in a loving family, and almost anyone would actually judge me an excellent parent. Should the state intervene because I’m not perfect?
Granted, that I’ve fed her Kraft Dinner is not as momentous a decision as a medical decision. There is plenty of case law in my country that parents do not have a universal right fo control over their children in cases where they propose to make a medical decision that a reasonable person would judge could kill or harm the child, and fair enough. That’s clearly over the line; being a parent doesn’t give you the right to kill your child. But that is a limit that has been tested and argued in court, and is obviously the extreme situation. It doesn’t follow from that that the state can always interfere in a parent’s decisions in the child “best interests.” In a spectrum of parental decisions, “let child die for no good reason” is up at the top of the scale, and “eat Kraft Dinner tonight” is way down at the bottom.
So where’s Alfie Evans on that scale? I am not sure - but he’s not right at the top, because this is NOT a question of life or death. Alfie’s fate is sealed.
Before deciding where one is on the Alfie Evans case, I think it behoves good discussion to ask just where the line is supposed to be. “Alfie Evans” isn’t the line. The line has to be some definition, as best as one can put together, of just how significant the delta between the child’s objective best interests and the rights of the parents really is.
For many of those examples the state may well intervene if they end up badly compromising the welfare of the child.
“where the line is supposed to be”?
What do you think the multiple court cases and hundreds of hours of testimony from medical experts and parents were trying to do? Not to mention the thousand of hours of interactions and discussions and planning between the hospital, patient and parents.
Have you read all the court reports that Stanislaus kindly provided? I urge you to.
That’s a great discussion for wanking about on the internet but no, I disagree it’s a discussion we need before deciding the Alfie case. As you say, it’s way past the line. If we are discussing Anal Invaders:3 do we really need to decide first “but what is porn, really?”. And the court is only going to get involved in these edge cases. No one is getting hauled into court because they signed their kid up for tuba lessons instead of piano.