[Magdalen] Alfie Evans has died

[Molly Wolf]

If Alfie’s heart went to a baby who would otherwise die, it would be a partial redemption of this tragedy.

Molly

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

> On May 3, 2018, at 12:07 AM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I read of a case where a child was declared brain dead, and yet the parents
> did not want to take her off life support. They felt they detected some
> signs of response.  An independent person came in and also detected signs
> of sentience, and so continued to ask similar questions over and over in
> order to see if the responses were a fluke or a valid response to the
> questions. He concluded that there was some thought process going on.
> 
> The hospital refused to allow her to remain there because they maintain
> that she was dead. The parents managed to get another hospital to take her,
> and there was a nurse there who was bullied by other staff, like, "How can
> you perform procedures on that dead girl?"
> 
> The young woman has been stabilized and moved to an apartment. Cue the
> questions of who is paying for this, since I don't really care about that
> stuff...
> 
> The implications for organ harvesting are not lost on the med staff.  The
> possibility that they are harvesting organs from a person not yet dead, is
> horrifying and virtually unthinkable.
> 
> 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 Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 11:43 AM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> There was an article in the New Yorker recently:
>> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die
>> 
>> The suggestion that physicians, men and women who cherish their own
>> intelligence, would think a non-thinking person is not alive, has stayed
>> with me.
>> 
>> I also remember my shock at hearing a physician say he’d never medicate a
>> patient so heavily that the patient was unable to pray. Protocols be
>> damned, I guess.
>> -M
>> 
>> 
>>> On Monday, April 30, 2018, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> me that doctors never have all the answers. Also, this was a black child,
>>> and the hospital did not take into account, apparently (nor did the legal
>>> system) the feelings and attitudes of African-Americans toward death and
>>> the dying process.
>>> 
>>> 
>>