Letting Go

Or not as the case may be.

Protesters supporting the parents of a 23-month-old boy at the centre of a life-support treatment battle have attempted to storm Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool, after the European court of human rights refused to intervene in the case.

Yeah, because storming the hospital really helps matters. It is none of these protesters’ business. As for the ECHR, well, probably the best decision – leave well alone. We can argue whether the parents should have the right to remove their child – and ultimately, yes, they should – however, this child is lost to them and the matter is an irrelevance. There is no getting better. The Italians are involved in empty gesturing here and as I said on my earlier comment about this case, they are feeding the parents false hope, for there is no hope. The doctors at Alder Hey and the judges who have deliberated on the matter are right, Alfie should be allowed to die with a bit of dignity and this palaver is certainly not dignified.

Speaking in a video on Facebook on Monday afternoon, Evans said his son’s life “hangs in the balance over the next couple of hours”.

Really? Seriously? The scans show that the brain has gone, there is no motor function. It isn’t coming back. What currently exists is not life. The being, the life force, the soul, if you like, has gone. All that is left is an empty shell. Alfie Evans no longer exists.

Evans said he would pursue a private prosecution against the hospital and the doctors involved in his son’s treatment.

For what precisely? For being honest about his son’s condition? For acting lawfully in trying to do what they consider is the best course of action? Sure, you can disagree that they should have the power to refuse his removal, but you cannot disagree that as it stands, it is lawful.

It is at this point that my sympathy – for I have been sympathetic – evaporates. This is pure vindictiveness and I cannot go along with that.

The boy’s brain has deteriorated to the point where he cannot breathe on his own.

“Alfie looks like a normal baby, but the unanimous opinion of the doctors who have examined him and the scans of his brain is that almost all of his brain has been destroyed.

“No one knows why. But that it has happened and is continuing to happen cannot be denied. It means that Alfie cannot breathe, or eat, or drink without sophisticated medical treatment. It also means that there is no hope of his ever getting better.”

This is not the opinion of one doctor in the NHS – it is the opinion of everyone who has studied the scans and it is the opinion of all of the judges who have been charged with making a judgement on what is a difficult case. Grieving father or not, Evans is now just being an arsehole.

The kindest thing to do will be to let Alfie go. Then they can grieve properly – preferably in private. Making him the centre of a media circus isn’t helping anyone – nor is going through the courts on a lost cause. Some cases are worth the fight. This one never was.


Edited to add: despite the Evans family claiming some sort of miracle because he is breathing on his own, the inevitable is starting to happen. Hopefully, it will be quick and peaceful. Then, perhaps, they can go away and grieve in private.

22 Comments

  1. Lets hope we don’t hear of bricks or worse going through the windows of any of the medical staff directly involved.

    Actors who play unpopular characters in soap operas have experienced such things I believe, and what is this for the mob outside than just another soap opera.

    • It’s often a tough call. Cast your mind back a few years to the case of Ashya King, the child who was not only medically abandoned as hopeless by Hampshire NHS, but who also sought and got a court order (overturned) to prevent his parents taking him abroad for experimental cancer treatment.

      The parents created a public outcry, and got the order of protection overturned, and three years later little Aysha King has just been declared cancer free – it was in the papers last month.

      That said, whilst public outcry is understandable, I cannot fathom what an angry mob of retarded Mumsnetters trying to storm the hospital was supposed to achieve. What was the plan of they got in? Beat up the nurses, rip Alfie from his life support and run out of the door with him? Utter fuckwits…

      • As was discussed in the previous post on this desperately sad case, there really are very few (if any) parallels with the Aysha King case. In this case the child is already, apparently, to all intents and purposes, dead. Rarely has the term ‘Habeas corpus’ been so horribly apt.

        • Oh, there’s one big parallel – the attitude of the NHS bigwigs who insist that they are right and no, you can’t even get a foreign dr to treat him, what, you think that child belongs to you?

          • Rightly or wrongly (and I suspect the latter), children haven’t ‘belonged’ to their parents for a long time now. The appalling treatment of the Kings by the NHS isn’t in question here.

          • Quite. The issue for me – regardless of the NHS’ powers – is that the Evans’ are refusing to accept the reality of the situation. The doctors and the courts, having looked at the scans are all saying the same thing – this boy will not live. That he has breathed on his own for a number of hours isn’t going to change that.

  2. Evans is now just being an arsehole
    Yes he is ,but lets be charitable and assume he has simply lost his reason from grief and anger at his son’s wyred, and his ,understandable enough, inability to dree it.
    As said i have steadfastly refused to allow myself to read the ‘reporting’ on this one, so I am not aware of all the details nor even precisely which horrible disease the lad has BUT I will assume at some point the parents took their baby to see a doctor, the doctor would have sent them to a specialist,run tests, ordered scans etc and at some point there after they would have been given a diagnosis. No doctor worth the name would have given them false hope. “Your son’s brain will die bit by bit. There is no cure. Your son is dead already, his body just hasn’t caught up” expressed perhaps somewhat more gently than that. It is obviously a disease that only ends one way.

    His parents would have been prepared, no doubt even offered counselling to prepare for the inevitable. Perhaps they should thank whatever deity they believe in for that; there are a lot of former parents out there who’d give anything to have gotten the chance to say ‘goodbye’ to their child.

    • Yes indeed. It’s the steadfast refusal to confront the inevitable that’s desperately sad. Blaming those doctors to the point of a private prosecution is where he crosses the line and loses my sympathy.

      • It seems to be borne of a modern culture which thinks that if you create enough fuss on Twitter everything can be fixed and a Doctor’s professional advice can similarly be ignored as irrelevant. It’s very sad.

  3. We would agree that the state does not own our bodies where organ transplants or the right to die are concerned, so why does the NHS think it owns this boy?
    The parents may be making bad choices, but why does the NHS get to take ownership of their son and keep them from removing him from hospital?
    That’s just wrong in so many ways

    • That’s another discussion. The one I’m having is related to their refusal to accept biological reality. The child’s brain has died he is going to die. As I said at the very end of the OP, some cases are worth fighting. This one isn’t.

    • I’m with Bucko. It’s now become, for the NHS, a case of ‘We’ve said there’s no hope, so how dare any foreign dr presume to interfere’.

      • To be fair, I’m not contradicting that. What I am saying is that the parents need to face reality. This child isn’t going to recover and even the foreign doctor the brought in recognises that.

  4. They have just announced on Radio 4 that the parents are returning to the High Court as the boy has been breathing unaided since the machine was turned off yesterday.

  5. It is a tragedy for the poor little mite but he should be allowed to go — his parents should grow up and face reality.

    I am no great supporter of the NHS and even less so of the ECHR, but their decisions were the right ones.

    Let him depart in peace.

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