AGAIN! UK judge denies parents' right to take child to Italy for treatment

I don't get this. Little Charlie Gard is now dead and here is another child where the parents have the money and Italy is fine with taking the child and the Judge in the UK says NO. HOW does this HAPPEN ?

Is it connected to the fact that the UK has a socialized health system? Or perhaps the fact that the UK has a bit less notions about individual freedom than other countries like the US do?

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/04/...cal-treatment/

Remember the Charlie Gard case? Parents of the young child had to watch the National Health Service in the United Kingdom allow him to die after refusing to allow the child to leave the country for experimental treatment. The diagnosis was too dire and the case considered too terminal for parental wishes to be considered.

A ghastly rerun is taking place, this time with Alfie Evans, only this time the diagnosis is unclear — and he’s surviving on his own after a court ordered him removed from a ventilator:

Justice Hayden also appeared to rule out his family’s wishes to take the 23-month-old to Italy for treatment.

Alfie has been at the centre of a life-or-death treatment battle, with his parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, trying to stop his doctors at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool from withdrawing life support in a sometimes acrimonious six-month dispute which has seen a series of court battles.
Last night life-support was withdrawn but Alfie, who has a degenerative neurological condition destroying his brain, has shocked medics by continuing to breathe unaided for nearly 24 hours with an air ambulance on stand by to fly the child to Italy.

But in a blow to Alfie’s parents and their supporters dubbed Alfie’s Army, Mr Justice Hayden, speaking to lawyers representing Alfie’s parents and Alder Hey Hospital, suggested he has ruled out further treatment in Italy or Germany.​

The Associated Press reported earlier today that the Vatican had offered to provide Alfie with medical care. Italy granted Alfie citizenship to try to smooth the process, but the UK has dug in its heels:

The head of the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital said the Italian defense ministry had a plane ready to transport Alfie to Italy if he were allowed. In an interview with Italian Radio 24, Mariella Enoc, who travelled to Liverpool to personally try to intervene on behalf of the parents, said she spoke to the Italian ambassador in London who said the plane could leave with him in a matter of minutes.

On Monday, the Italian foreign ministry announced it had granted Alfie Italian citizenship to facilitate his arrival and transport. …

Alfie is in a “semi-vegetative state” as a result of a degenerative neurological condition doctors have been unable to identify. He was taken off life support after a series of court rulings backed doctors who said further treatment was futile.

Alfie’s parents, Evans, 21, and Kate James, 20, want to take him to the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital. Doctors at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital believe that would not be in the toddler’s best interests, and British courts have agreed.​

And here we have the crux of the issue. One might understand if a state-controlled health care system decided that further treatment would take valuable resources from patients who would benefit more, but that’s not what is happening with Alfie. In this case as with Charlie Gard, the government has not only decided to stop providing any medical assistance to Alfie but to actively prevent his parents from seeking care elsewhere. And all this without a firm diagnosis, and with the curious description of semi-vegetative state, which appears to indicate brain activity is still taking place.

Why is it the court’s business if the parents seek treatment elsewhere, especially from qualified medical facilities like Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital? What does the UK lose if Alfie Evans gets on a plane? Nothing, except the power of life and death over its subjects and the potential for embarrassment if they are proven wrong. That’s already happened, as Alfie unexpectedly survived the withdrawal of the ventilator.

This is an evil decision. It should shame everyone connected to the system which allows such a decision to stand.

The UK's Nation Health Service will be scandalized if it's discovered their incompetent doctors overlooked a diagnosis they should have made and the boy gets treatment somewhere else and makes a full recovery.

They'd rather let him die than have that happen.

Or at least that's what some suspect.

 

There is medical ethics to consider - you cannot subject a minor to experimental treatment if that treatment does not have a reasonable hope of success

Now a "degenerative neurological condition" means that there is nothing there left to save as far as the brain is concerned. They are saving a shell

Now draw back and look at the big picture

A health service - ANY health service has finite funding. You have a choice - spend $5,000 per day on one child or spend that money on saving a thousand chidren

Which do YOU choose??

 

Its simple. The UK is embarrassed that its health care system has failed so spectacularly. They would rather have the boy die and the family suffer than be embarrassed. That's how "progressive" nations operate.

 

Complete and utter rubbish

 

The hospital in Italy isn’t offering any kind of treatment, only ongoing life support and palliative care. The legitimate concern is that this could just be prolonging the child’s suffering when there is pretty n=much zero prospect of him making any kind of recovery. There is clearly a Catholic element with the Vatican run hospital and a concern that they wouldn’t accept the option of turning off life support even if they knew the child was suffering.

It is a question of individual rights and freedoms, as it would be anywhere else, but the question is balancing the wishes of the parents with the rights of the child. Parents are not free to do anything they want to their children and sometimes the courts need to step in to independently determine what is best for the child. It’s not an easy decision either way and I’d question whether there is any “right” answer in this kind of situation.

This has nothing to do with the structure of the UK healthcare system other than removing the question of money or any expectation for the parents to pay for his care regardless of what happens. I’d like to think doctors working at any hospital would be raising the same concerns regardless of the funding basis of the organisation they work for.

 

The child is too young to have rights, never mind know how to exercise them. He doesn't even have self-awareness so how on earth can he understand the concept of human rights? And that is nothing to do with his condition, it applies to all children of his age, and upto 3 years. Even the most evil individual in the history of man was 100% dependent upon an adult during those years.

 

It is still what people who are afraid of socialized medicine as a "death panel'. When the government has the power to decide who lives or dies, whether the reason is sound medicine, economic or whatever...The decision should be ultimately up to the family. Not the courts or government.

 

You are wrong legally, you are wrong morally and you are wrong practically.

Of course young children have rights, otherwise it wouldn’t be illegal for their parents neglect, abuse or kill them. Awareness of or ability to understand rights is not a requirement to have them either, otherwise a vast range of people wouldn’t have human rights either (older children, the serious mentally ill, anyone in a coma, the intellectually ignorant, members of isolated tribes, etc.).

Dependency on others doesn’t invalidate human rights either, if anything it makes them much more significant. The whole point of enumerating rights and formally enforcing them is to protect the vulnerable who are incapable of asserting their rights themselves.

Parents exercise the rights on behalf their children, especially very young children but they have a responsibility to act in the true interests of the child. Where they fail to do that to the harm or determent of the child, others have the right and responsibility to step in. That is what is happening in this case.

 

How are what the parents want to do here to the detriment of their child? The official line of the NHS is that the child is going to die anyway.
Why do you believe it's unethical for them to try to seek treatment elsewhere?

Are the NHS doctors so concerned about the parents wasting their own money?

 

Again, nobody anywhere is offering any form of treatment. Even the Italian hospital can only offer indefinite life support with no prospect of any kind of recovery.

Obviously only a limited view on the clinical details of Alfie's condition are in the public domain (rightly so) but based on what has been reported from the various court cases, the doctors believe there is a real possibility that he is suffering pain or discomfort, though they can't know for sure. They are sadly confident that there is no prospect of any recovery though. The combination of these two things will be why they're of the opinion that continuing life support is not in his best interest. At best nothing changes, at worst they're prolonging his silent suffering.

 

This is an excellent argument as to why any given source should be allowed to decide to no longer provide services. However it is a crap argument as to why the parents should not be allowed to take their child to a source willing to provide services. I have no problem with the British medical system deciding not to provide treatment. The wrong here is that they are keeping him from others who are willing to provide treatment.

 

Then refute it with facts, if you can.

 

We choose not-socialism.

 

The problem is that there is no one true measure of determent here. It's all opinion. And especially in such a case, parental decision should not.be overruled.

 

The NHS isn't doing this baby any favours.

 

There is a simple refutation

This was not only a UK court that stopped that child from being taken to a different country

 

Isn't it? Sometimes god calls for even little ones

 

There have been multiple court battles inside and outside the UK - all have come to the same conclusion

Parents do not always act in the best interests of the child

 

What this is really about is taking away rights from the parents, when what the parents want to do is perfectly reasonable and would have been done by many parents concerned about their child.

 

IS it?? How do you know? Are you a medical professional because I am and this is not truly reasonable. There is no real hope that any viable outcome will happen for this poor wee thing - god is calling and sometimes we have to allow an answer to that call

 

Please elaborate. I am not aware of anything else stopping the parents from accepting the pope's offer.

 

Right now God's represenative, the Pope, is calling for this child to come to Italy.

 

Nor do courts. Please provide a reference to those courts outside the UK where this issue was fought.

 

Please. How many times have medical professionals been wrong? Quite a number. Near where I live, there is a child that had a similar mitochondrial condition, but it was attacking a different part of his systems. The doctors said hospice care and the insurance said the same. The parents decided to deal with it out of pocket. While it costs them $500 a week, the child is on a "mitomix", I think is what the father called it, and where the doctors were not giving him 6 months to live, he is now a talking, playing 2 year old. He eats on his own and plays and has a healthy body weight.

 

They took the case to the European Court of Human Rights also rejected the case so, it has been rejected by courts, courts of appeal etc and yet people are still determined to see conspiracies in the woodwork