[Magdalen] Alfie Evans has died

[Molly Wolf]

I doubt if anyone ever got his brain back after it turned into fluid.  I know brains are incredibly good at coping, but Alfie’s condition was incompatible with life.  Period. Remember, he had been deteriorating for more than a year.

What really bothers me is that people like Gingrich are using this tragedy — and ignoring pretty much ALL the facts — to inflame opposition to single-payer health insurance.  Alfie got superb care at one of the best pediatric hospitals in the world, without regard to his parents’ finances.  Would that have happened in the U.S.?  And the child’s interests were defended by his own legal representative.

Nobody — ESPECIALLY his medical caregivers — wanted Alfie to die.  There was no arrogant brutality, only grief and compassion.  He just couldn’t be saved, not by Italian doctors, not by anyone.

Molly



The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way. -- Mark Twain

> On May 2, 2018, at 11:56 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I would not say that this is what was happening, but the powers that were
> in this matter had stated very firmly that the illness was incurable. Now
> assume that they then are nice enough to allow the parents to take the kid
> to someone else and also imagine that the kid is somehow cured.  The powers
> that were would have been a laughing stock. Or at least, that's possibly
> the way they looked at it.
> 
> Every once in a while, there's a spontaneous remission from incurable
> disease. If that happened to this child, you and I would stand up and give
> the Glory, but for these powers, it would be a horrible, horrible thing.
> 
> I'm not saying this was their rationale, and of course one wants to be able
> to assume that all physicians are honest and honorable, but then....
> 
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
> 
>> On Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 7:42 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Alfie Evans has died.
>> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alfie-evans-sick-british-
>> toddler-at-center-of-legal-battle-dies/
>> 
>> I don't know how many of you have been following this case, but I have, and
>> I have real mixed feelings, both as a nurse and as a mother. One of the
>> feelings I have is one of anger, of "Whose child is this anyway?" ISTM that
>> in this case, as in another one I'll get to in a bit, that the state
>> overreached itself and took possession of the child for itself, completely
>> cutting off any rights of the parents at all. The parents had beef fighting
>> for months to take Alfie, who suffered from a degenerative brain disorder
>> so rare that it didn't even have a name, to Vatican City for experimental
>> treatment (more likely, for evaluation before such treatment, but
>> whatever....) but British courts ruled that they could not do so because
>> the doctors treating him in Liverpool said "further treatment was futile".
>> This just seems like overreach to me. The parents' campaign was backed by
>> the pope and Christian groups, which helped draw international attention to
>> the case. The hospital withdrew Alfie's life support Monday after a series
>> of court rulings sided with the doctors and blocked further medical
>> treatment. Alfie died at 2:30 am this morning Liverpool time.
>> 
>> As a mother and a grandmother, I am furious. I can hardly put into words
>> how angry this makes me. Surely the parents of such a child have the right
>> to try something else, especially if the NHS isn't paying for it, which
>> apparently they were not being asked to. Even if the doctors in Vatican
>> City shook their heads and said "There's nothing we can do either," and
>> recommended comfort care, they would have known they tried. But this
>> attitude of "the child belongs to the hospital first and then to the state
>> and the parents have no say" just pisses me off. (Sorry for the language.)
>> If the little guy had been abused, I would feel different. I've seen that,
>> and that's a whole other ball game. But Alfie's parents obviously loved him
>> dearly and only wanted the best for him and they have felt for some time
>> that they were NOT being listened to...and perhaps they weren't. After all,
>> they are quite young. Dad is 21 and Mom is no older.
>> 
>> As a nurse, I understand about futile treatment, certainly, but there is
>> also something here about medical arrogance. I've seen that too. Plenty of
>> it during my active career, especially in intensive care. It appears, at
>> least in the news stories, that there's a good bit of that at play also.
>> 
>> I mentioned another case, one that ME will undoubtedly remember and may
>> have some different opinions about, but it also involved a teenage patient
>> who was basically "taken over" by a hospital, some doctors, and a judge who
>> was, IIRC, found to be corrupt in such cases. For over a year her parents
>> were not allowed to see her, her own doctor was not allowed to see her, and
>> the hospital treated her as a psychiatric patient rather than a medical
>> one. It was pretty much a horror story. I stumbled on it quite by accident,
>> and would likely not have heard about it otherwise, because the father took
>> a direction in publicizing it that I never follow. Had he gone to other
>> than extreme right-wing media (Glenn Beck, etc.) his case would probably
>> have been heard, and the case of Justina Pellettier would be much better
>> known. However, even with his tack in that direction, my sympathies were
>> with the parents and definitely not with the hospital. Boston Children's
>> got a pretty black eye over that one, as well it should have.
>>