Category: Decision Making

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 A 23 month old toddler, Alfie Evans died two short weeks ago when his life support was withdrawn per court order, over and above his parents’ passionate and emotional pleas to keep them.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…

Charlie Gard was a very sick boy born with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a rare disease with no known cure resulting in death in infancy. During his hospitalization at the Greater Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), his parents found Dr. Hirano of Columbia University who was willing to offer an experimental therapy that had a slight chance of possibly extending Charlie’s life. They needed GOSH to approve the patient transfer but GOSH refused. Their physicians argued that Charlie was so sick and the therapy was so unlikely to work that it was wrong to even attempt. The UK High Court of Justice confirmed GOSH’s position and Charlie died under hospice care on July 28. Here is why you need to care. Continue reading at Times of Israel