From the calm funeral earlier this week, you wouldn’t know that Alfie Evan’s last few days of life were surrounded by loud protests and emotional turmoil all over social media.
A 23 month old toddler, Alfie Evans died two short weeks ago when his life support was withdrawn per court order, over and above his parents’ passionate and emotional pleas to keep them. Alfie suffered from a neurodegenerative disease and since December 2016, was hospitalized at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, connected to a ventilator and receiving nutritional support. The medical consensus was that he would never make any meaningful recovery as CAT scans revealed that most of the white matter of his brain had been destroyed.
Since Alfie would never make any meaningful recovery, the hospital recommended that all life sustaining measures be withdrawn to allow him to ‘die in peace.’ Alfie’s parents, Tom and Kate acknowledged the grim prognosis but argued that so long as Alfie could live, his continued life is a goal in and of itself that should be pursued.
During the entire ordeal, people on all sides – protesting near the hospital and all over social media – were very upset and very opinionated.
What was the right thing to do in this sad and complicated case?