Alfie Evans and the end of the myth of the UK as a free country.

[rory_20_uk]

He died when active treatment was withdrawn. They did not kill him - Intensive Care is not a "natural" state of affairs. There is no "right" to intensive treatment that has no hope of working. It is completely logical not to focus resources on the hopeless. Else why do we stop CPR after an amount of time? Why not just keep on going until the body starts to rot? To do otherwise by your logic is nonsensical.

Starving patients to death is a time honoured method in the USA as well - since this is not undertaking any action to cause death, merely taking no action to prevent it. I have not seen you espouse for others when life support is withdrawn because the family want it to be. This is a barbaric way to die that certainly in the UK if one were to treat an animal in that way one would face criminal prosecution as the animal should be humanely (oh the irony) put down... but we do not do that to humans.

Of all the needless deaths in the NHS - of which every year there are thousands - I can not fathom why you focus on one needful death.

[Fisherking]

He died when active treatment was withdrawn. They did not kill him - Intensive Care is not a "natural" state of affairs. There is no "right" to intensive treatment that has no hope of working. It is completely logical not to focus resources on the hopeless. Else why do we stop CPR after an amount of time? Why not just keep on going until the body starts to rot? To do otherwise by your logic is nonsensical.

Starving patients to death is a time honoured method in the USA as well - since this is not undertaking any action to cause death, merely taking no action to prevent it. I have not seen you espouse for others when life support is withdrawn because the family want it to be. This is a barbaric way to die that certainly in the UK if one were to treat an animal in that way one would face criminal prosecution as the animal should be humanely (oh the irony) put down... but we do not do that to humans.

Of all the needless deaths in the NHS - of which every year there are thousands - I can not fathom why you focus on one needful death.

The answer to your questions is simple. Because in this case people were denied their liberty. They had their choice overridden by government.

It is something government has taken an oath to uphold by codifying it in law. Yet this serves only the wishes of the state.

Either you have rights or you do not. And this says not. But you seem happy to play “make believe” and can find justification, no mater how slim in the decision.

It is after all just one unless animal culled from the tax farm.

[rory_20_uk]

Every day millions of people have their "liberties" overridden by government.

The choice enforced the rights of the child, not the parents who do not have carte blanche rights. They never have in the UK and I don't think they have in the USA either.

The justification both follows the views of the experts and it is in the best interests of the child. Only those who fantasise of "inalienable rights" which were codified by slave owners.

Why on earth are you fetishising one brain dead child and ignoring the "rights" of the vast number of others who have theirs overridden every day?

[Pannonian]

The answer to your questions is simple. Because in this case people were denied their liberty. They had their choice overridden by government.

It is something government has taken an oath to uphold by codifying it in law. Yet this serves only the wishes of the state.

Either you have rights or you do not. And this says not. But you seem happy to play “make believe” and can find justification, no mater how slim in the decision.

It is after all just one unless animal culled from the tax farm.

This is a language of debate that is alien to the British political world. British politics is founded on case studies rather than abstract principles. Political debate based on abstract principles is the realm of the intellectual elite, mostly that of the Left.

[Fisherking]

Every day millions of people have their "liberties" overridden by government.

The choice enforced the rights of the child, not the parents who do not have carte blanche rights. They never have in the UK and I don't think they have in the USA either.

The justification both follows the views of the experts and it is in the best interests of the child. Only those who fantasise of "inalienable rights" which were codified by slave owners.

Why on earth are you fetishising one brain dead child and ignoring the "rights" of the vast number of others who have theirs overridden every day?

In your first statement you assert that “Might Makes Right”.

In the second you invent a right to die, when I only see a right to life.

Then you go on to assert Experts while there were experts on both sides of the issue and the court choose to go with those who upheld the government view rather than the other. Both were only opinions of equal weight.

Next as to unalienable rights, those came for both English Common Law and the Enlightenment. They did not originate in unruly colonies but upon the principals which make up your own constitution. As they saw it, it was their right as free Englishmen the sought to uphold. As for some holding slaves, that was also a British Institution brought over into a new republic. It was by all accounts a Crown Court of the 1600s which found that Black Africans could be held a chattel in perpetuity.

Lastly, that would be because it is most often the least that need those protections the most. That government abuses the rights of others is no excuse and even inexcusable.

I am not content to be only a farm animal being obedient to the masters chance has placed above me. That so many are so careless never ceases to amaze me.

This is a language of debate that is alien to the British political world. British politics is founded on case studies rather than abstract principles. Political debate based on abstract principles is the realm of the intellectual elite, mostly that of the Left.

Thank you for the insight. It explains a good deal.

Just an aside, would you think some of it is due to the absence of principals among most politicians?

[Husar]

The answer to your questions is simple. Because in this case people were denied their liberty. They had their choice overridden by government.

I can't shake the feeling that you're only arguing about the rights of the parents and completely ignore the rights of the child.
A brainless child cannot make choices, so who should make choices for it? Usually the parents at first, but what if their choices are objectively bad for the child? Does their right to make choices override the well-being of the child? Should parents be allowed to give their children into slavery to pay off their debts for example? Would it be tyranny of the government to override that choice?

And your assumption that staying alive is always the preferable choice is flawed given that plenty of people with terminal illnesses do want to choose to die rather than continue suffering. In their cases there is also a debate about whether or not the government should be allowed to forbid them the suicide option. What do you think about that? Should they be allowed to choose death or be prevented from doing "significant harm" to themselves and slowly wither away on life support?

[Fisherking]

I can't shake the feeling that you're only arguing about the rights of the parents and completely ignore the rights of the child.
A brainless child cannot make choices, so who should make choices for it? Usually the parents at first, but what if their choices are objectively bad for the child? Does their right to make choices override the well-being of the child? Should parents be allowed to give their children into slavery to pay off their debts for example? Would it be tyranny of the government to override that choice?

And your assumption that staying alive is always the preferable choice is flawed given that plenty of people with terminal illnesses do want to choose to die rather than continue suffering. In their cases there is also a debate about whether or not the government should be allowed to forbid them the suicide option. What do you think about that? Should they be allowed to choose death or be prevented from doing "significant harm" to themselves and slowly wither away on life support?

In this case it is simply the wishes of the parents to seek further aid. The child’s condition was not able to be diagnosed. There is nothing unreasonable about their intentions.

What I fail to see the logic of is the institutional intervention to prevent it. Nor do I find the court decision to back a government agency at all convincing.

There needs to be overarching proof that the parents intention would result in grievous harm. The testimony of one set of experts vs. another set of experts is just a weighing of opinion. It is not proof.

It shows a flagrant disregard of individual liberty and abandonment of legal principles. This my not be of any importance at all, as I am informed, to individual Britons but on the world stage it smacks of supreme hypocrisy. They always decry the human rights abuses of other countries while giving less than lip service to their own people.

[Strike For The South]

Alfie Evans is just one of these cases that American conservatives love to trot out to scare Americans about the government.

In Reality, if Alfie was American, he would have reached his insurance maximum long ago, his parents would have mortgaged the house, started a go fund me, and then divorced as they failed to forestall the inevitability of their sons death.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Alfie Evans is just one of these cases that American conservatives love to trot out to scare Americans about the government.

In Reality, if Alfie was American, he would have reached his insurance maximum long ago, his parents would have mortgaged the house, started a go fund me, and then divorced as they failed to forestall the inevitability of their sons death.

But that is just the FREE MARKET telling you that his life doesn't provide as much value as his expenses. You would rather have BIG GOVERNMENT make such decisions??!?!?!?

[Fisherking]

Some of you seem confused and elevate postulated rights with natural rights and think that is freedom.

Those rights postulated to you by government always come with a mermaid of statutes, conditions, and a bureaucracy for implementing them. It is not a right if it must be delivered or overseen by others. It is not what freedom is predicated upon.

The idea that a made-up right trumps a natural right is a convenient fraud perpetrated by government.

With actual right the government only must stand aside. Their mandate is to punish those who force their will upon others.

Bureaucrats have incentive to enforce regulations because their jobs depend upon it. Courts are also a part of the government and most often side with government in regulatory and statutory measures. There is no one to hold government to account.

The Hospitals receive economic incentives for caring out the Liverpool path. NHS and the general government have economic incentive to remove net consumers of services. It is obvious, baring a miracle, that the child would ever be a net contributor (tax payer) to government. The same as with the elderly.

There is no recognised right to die. There is right to life and a right to liberty. It is clear that these were disallowed by the parties of government. Rights government is forsworn to uphold. That is tyranny.

As to the father’s apology to the hospital, that was for the fear caused by demonstrators calling for the hospital to be burned down. Alder Hey Hospital. As the father was only a three year old when the last great controversy broke (2001), he may have been ignorant of what transpired there.

Nothing in the government argument saved the child from harm. That was the clear intent of the law. So called experts theorising does not alter that.

Government disregarded its actual responsibility for a feigned responsibility and I see nothing there to debate.

[Husar]

There needs to be overarching proof that the parents intention would result in grievous harm. The testimony of one set of experts vs. another set of experts is just a weighing of opinion. It is not proof.

It shows a flagrant disregard of individual liberty and abandonment of legal principles. This my not be of any importance at all, as I am informed, to individual Britons but on the world stage it smacks of supreme hypocrisy. They always decry the human rights abuses of other countries while giving less than lip service to their own people.

Well, if you want to talk about it like that, then you have no proof for the disregard of legal principles since you're not aware of the exact arguments made in front of the judge. Therefore, you are abandoning your own principles.

You don't know what exactly the two sets of experts said, what proof or experience they brought to the table and so on, or do you?
You're basically declaring the entire legal system and government guilty based on how you feel about a case and the bits of info you got without ever even having sat in that courtroom.

If individual liberties only go so far until they affect others, then the liberties of the parents were affecting the child in this case and that's where other people stepped in. It's a fundamental function of government in a free society to protect the rights of individuals from others overstepping their boundaries. Your liberties are worth nothing if those who can't defend themselves don't have any.

The court obviously concluded that prolonging the treatment was not in the best interest of the child, and perhaps not even the parents. It appears that once emotions toned down, even the parents agreed, since the father moved from wanting to sue the hospital to thanking the doctors...

[Fisherking]

Well, if you want to talk about it like that, then you have no proof for the disregard of legal principles since you're not aware of the exact arguments made in front of the judge. Therefore, you are abandoning your own principles.

You don't know what exactly the two sets of experts said, what proof or experience they brought to the table and so on, or do you?
You're basically declaring the entire legal system and government guilty based on how you feel about a case and the bits of info you got without ever even having sat in that courtroom.

If individual liberties only go so far until they affect others, then the liberties of the parents were affecting the child in this case and that's where other people stepped in. It's a fundamental function of government in a free society to protect the rights of individuals from others overstepping their boundaries. Your liberties are worth nothing if those who can't defend themselves don't have any.

The court obviously concluded that prolonging the treatment was not in the best interest of the child, and perhaps not even the parents. It appears that once emotions toned down, even the parents agreed, since the father moved from wanting to sue the hospital to thanking the doctors...

Did it now? How is it you know. Were you in court? Can you speak to the emotional state of the father also? Was it frustration, resignation, PTSD, not wanting more turmoil that made the change.
What made him drop the suit? Money, legal advice, perhaps remorse.

Are you familiar with expert testimony? Are you a parent? Ever lost a child or had one that was comatose? Ever had medical advice telling you to abandon all hope?

As the father said, the condition wasn’t even diagnosed. Do you think they were entitled even to seek that, particularly if they hoped to have more children?

Was it doctors who stood in the way or was it the bureaucrats? Do you know anything about the stages of grief?

It is obvious you are not an empath. You have no understanding of the ordeal this young couple has been through and I sincerely hope you never will.

Government at any level inserting its self at such a time shows a callous disregard for human decency. What would have it mattered to them had the child lived a few days or a few weeks longer. If the child were “brain dead” then how was it torture to the child? It seems a foolish excuse to exercise power.

[Pannonian]

Did it now? How is it you know. Were you in court? Can you speak to the emotional state of the father also? Was it frustration, resignation, PTSD, not wanting more turmoil that made the change.
What made him drop the suit? Money, legal advice, perhaps remorse.

Are you familiar with expert testimony? Are you a parent? Ever lost a child or had one that was comatose? Ever had medical advice telling you to abandon all hope?

As the father said, the condition wasn’t even diagnosed. Do you think they were entitled even to seek that, particularly if they hoped to have more children?

Was it doctors who stood in the way or was it the bureaucrats? Do you know anything about the stages of grief?

It is obvious you are not an empath. You have no understanding of the ordeal this young couple has been through and I sincerely hope you never will.

Government at any level inserting its self at such a time shows a callous disregard for human decency. What would have it mattered to them had the child lived a few days or a few weeks longer. If the child were “brain dead” then how was it torture to the child? It seems a foolish excuse to exercise power.

Some of us have gone through the process for a parent. Painful, despairing, but at no time did I feel that the doctors have anything other than the welfare of my parent in mind.

[Husar]

Did it now? How is it you know. Were you in court? Can you speak to the emotional state of the father also? Was it frustration, resignation, PTSD, not wanting more turmoil that made the change.
What made him drop the suit? Money, legal advice, perhaps remorse.

Are you familiar with expert testimony? Are you a parent? Ever lost a child or had one that was comatose? Ever had medical advice telling you to abandon all hope?

As the father said, the condition wasn’t even diagnosed. Do you think they were entitled even to seek that, particularly if they hoped to have more children?

Was it doctors who stood in the way or was it the bureaucrats? Do you know anything about the stages of grief?

It is obvious you are not an empath. You have no understanding of the ordeal this young couple has been through and I sincerely hope you never will.

Government at any level inserting its self at such a time shows a callous disregard for human decency. What would have it mattered to them had the child lived a few days or a few weeks longer. If the child were “brain dead” then how was it torture to the child? It seems a foolish excuse to exercise power.

I'm not the one accusing people with a very broad brush...
You can spare yourself the comments about my empathy, I never said I blame the parents, but that doesn't mean I have to rationally agree with their every move just because my feelings say so. Are you advocating we base all our laws on who has the strongest feelings about something? Bring back family feuds, revenge killings and witch burnings?

[Montmorency]

...

Wait, I think you're not apprehending what it was I brought to your attention. I don't recall having yet made any argument about what's all good or worthwhile about a given arrangement. This is another layer of the topic.

0. Just to let it be noted, the child did not die from starvation, he was removed from mechanical ventilation. Taking a patient off life support is not murder, or else we get to argue whether opposing government intervention is murder of another sort.

1. I wanted to make it clear that the law established the course of action taken (therefore not internally arbitrary, regardless of your opinion of its overall validity or legitimacy), and that this law codified aspects of what is considered "inherent jurisdiction" of courts that creates an authority to evaluate a subject's best interests. Which jurisdiction is also considered to exist beyond the particular law as a central component of common law. You're, uh, not going to like this one...:

Inherent jurisdiction is a doctrine of the English common law that a superior court has the jurisdiction to hear any matter that comes before it, unless a statute or rule limits that authority or grants exclusive jurisdiction to some other court or tribunal. The term is also used when a governmental institution derives its jurisdiction from a fundamental governing instrument such as a constitution. In the English case of Bremer Vulkan Schiffbau und Maschinenfabrik v. South India Shipping Corporation Ltd, Lord Diplock described the court's inherent jurisdiction as a general power to control its own procedure so as to prevent its being used to achieve injustice.

Inherent jurisdiction appears to apply to an almost limitless set of circumstances. There are four general categories for use of the court's inherent jurisdiction:

1. to ensure convenience and fairness in legal proceedings;
2. to prevent steps being taken that would render judicial proceedings inefficacious;
3. to prevent abuses of process;
4. to act in aid of superior courts and in aid or control of inferior courts and tribunals.

As such, the exercise of inherent jurisdiction is a broad doctrine allowing a court to control its own processes and to control the procedures before it. The power stems not from any particular statute or legislation, but rather from inherent powers invested in a court to control the proceedings brought before it.

Don't look so green though, as I said the Children Act of 1989 does constrain its invocation somewhat.


2. This case, the withdrawal of intensive care to Alfie Evans, WAS NOT decided on the basis of "significant harm" thresholds. The parents were the ones who argued that it ought to be decided according to that standard, but the courts ruled that "best interests" is the paramount principle and that the "significant harm" principle is derivative thereof and subordinate thereto (i.e. you can't have one without the other).


(2.5. Theoretically, if society/government in the UK or Europe came to evaluate best interests differently, the courts could be used to prevent termination of life support.)

3.

It is not to protect government but the individual. Codifying rights is not a restraint on the individual but upon the government.

Governments don’t grant rights, they can merely confer privileges which they may also withhold.

That's correct, and what the government interprets the object of the law and the late proceedings to be. Can the state decide what the best interests of a citizen are in any circumstance? If you say no, then from an extension of the judges reasoning one might rejoin that this excises the grounding for the state to decide when one citizen is violating another's rights (except perhaps in narrowly and explicitly codified manner involving a finite, concrete action/result). That this would then seriously constrain the ability of the state to categorize and respond to what you refer to as "criminal intent to do harm to the ward", what you said would be cause for derogating parental rights.



Or to summarize, either you take issue with the specific decisions and arguments of the NHS/courts in this episode, or you take issue with the powers and authorities relied upon regardless of application.

If you take issue on the specific (result), know that your interpretation is available to be applied, it's just most people (and so the case law and professional consensus) disagree with you at the moment.

If you take issue on the general (process), then the logical consequences of your position may in fact redound to undermine it.

He died when active treatment was withdrawn. They did not kill him - Intensive Care is not a "natural" state of affairs. There is no "right" to intensive treatment that has no hope of working. It is completely logical not to focus resources on the hopeless. Else why do we stop CPR after an amount of time? Why not just keep on going until the body starts to rot? To do otherwise by your logic is nonsensical.

I don't see the cogency in this analogy. The important distinction is that CPR is an acute emergency procedure, not an ongoing one. When administering CPR, there is immediate uncertainty as to the patient's state, whereas with life support by default you know the patient is still alive (or else you discover otherwise and move them to the morgue).

I can't shake the feeling that you're only arguing about the rights of the parents and completely ignore the rights of the child.
A brainless child cannot make choices, so who should make choices for it? Usually the parents at first, but what if their choices are objectively bad for the child? Does their right to make choices override the well-being of the child? Should parents be allowed to give their children into slavery to pay off their debts for example? Would it be tyranny of the government to override that choice?

And your assumption that staying alive is always the preferable choice is flawed given that plenty of people with terminal illnesses do want to choose to die rather than continue suffering. In their cases there is also a debate about whether or not the government should be allowed to forbid them the suicide option. What do you think about that? Should they be allowed to choose death or be prevented from doing "significant harm" to themselves and slowly wither away on life support?

The position of the Catholic Church I suppose is that the state of being alive is valuable in itself, equally for every single 'human being'.

But the Vatican does also advocate the acceptance of mortality in the face of futility, so at some point treatment can be refused by either care provider or patient.

[Montmorency]

-double-

[Fisherking]

Monty, I have never argued the legality of what transpired. Many things have, and continue to happen that are perfectly legal yet not ethical, moral, or just.

What I said was that it was an unnecessary intervention by government.

That it was also an infringement of the basic human rights of the parents.

The decision of the court to hear the case doesn’t even show good judgement, leaving aside the finding.

Additionally the child lingered for several days after life support was remove and sustenance denied. Did you want to split hairs on the cause of death?

We also know that this is not the first case of this nature and the others have also been blocked form seeking medical aid outside the country.

Why? Are all UK parents presumed to have evil intent toward their children, or is it an arrogant or paranoid bureaucracy seeking what it believes to be in its interest?

The notion that continuing life is torture is waring a bit thin.

My contention is that the cases should simply have been allowed to seek treatment outside the UK.

Denying them that only brings unwanted attention to the NHS and the courts. If this child or any of the others had gone to Italy, France, Germany, etc. It would not have cause a blip in the news. And this above all else puzzles me. It seems the height of governmental stupidity.

[Husar]

I don't see the cogency in this analogy. The important distinction is that CPR is an acute emergency procedure, not an ongoing one. When administering CPR, there is immediate uncertainty as to the patient's state, whereas with life support by default you know the patient is still alive (or else you discover otherwise and move them to the morgue).

Well, alive/dead is not the only state one can be uncertain about, there can also be recovering/degrading/unchanging and possibly others.

[rory_20_uk]

I don't see the cogency in this analogy. The important distinction is that CPR is an acute emergency procedure, not an ongoing one. When administering CPR, there is immediate uncertainty as to the patient's state, whereas with life support by default you know the patient is still alive (or else you discover otherwise and move them to the morgue).

When a patient is on life support this means that the body is alive. Whether there is a self aware life-form in there varies tremendously. The body can be kept going for in some cases years.

With CPR there is often initial uncertainty, and is an emergency. When it has been going for 30 minutes the uncertainty is much, much less - and unless there is a really good reason to the contrary chances of recovery are dropping towards zero. Hence why the active treatment stops when it is viewed as futile. And also why there are such things as "Do Not Attempt Resuscitation" orders since often the patient's state can be predicted and treatment that is not required is not attempted.

[Montmorency]

When a patient is on life support this means that the body is alive. Whether there is a self aware life-form in there varies tremendously. The body can be kept going for in some cases years.

With CPR there is often initial uncertainty, and is an emergency. When it has been going for 30 minutes the uncertainty is much, much less - and unless there is a really good reason to the contrary chances of recovery are dropping towards zero. Hence why the active treatment stops when it is viewed as futile. And also why there are such things as "Do Not Attempt Resuscitation" orders since often the patient's state can be predicted and treatment that is not required is not attempted.

Yes, you could contrast it in terms of stability and uncertainty. What I'm saying then is against conflating a disruption of stable equilibrium with tapering of acute intervention under uncertainty.

[rory_20_uk]

Yes, you could contrast it in terms of stability and uncertainty. What I'm saying then is against conflating a disruption of stable equilibrium with tapering of acute intervention under uncertainty.

One is not stable equilibrium - often it varies as they undergo tests and of course they can both improve and deteriorate. The time frames might well be different but the principles are identical.

[Montmorency]

One is not stable equilibrium - often it varies as they undergo tests and of course they can both improve and deteriorate. The time frames might well be different but the principles are identical.

To clarify, I'm not asserting there is a stable equilibrium as a rule, but where there is one - such as where maintaining the procedure without further changes in condition entails indefinite perdurance - the nature of termination is clearly different.

It's the difference between 'if I stop pushing this button you will die' and 'if I push this button it might reduce mortality/morbidity'.

[rory_20_uk]

To clarify, I'm not asserting there is a stable equilibrium as a rule, but where there is one - such as where maintaining the procedure without further changes in condition entails indefinite perdurance - the nature of termination is clearly different.

It's the difference between 'if I stop pushing this button you will die' and 'if I push this button it might reduce mortality/morbidity'.

Although that is somewhat of a circular argument - in those that will be stable will be stable, then it comes down to whether "stable" is the same as "being alive". E.g. live donors for organ transplant they will keep them going and then cut out the required organs that "kills" the donor. Except that the donor is already viewed as dead and merely the husk remains. Waiting for the body to die would result in organs that at best are much less viable and worst case are useless for transplants.

In CPR stopping does not definitely mean that a person will die - and there is no "right" to have treatment that will save one's life - even if not having the treatment will definitely lead to death. There never has been - look at the "death boards" who decided who would receive dialysis and who would not.