First They Came For Charlie Gard…

     Proving just how much British healthcare is hell bent on killing the young, British doctors and courts are refusing to allow young Alfie Evans to be moved to an Italian hospital that has already agreed to provide long term care, all this despite the source of the problem haven’t being ascertained yet.

     The British want this child dead, and so dead he shall be.

     Wesley J. Smith, over at the National Review, notes this does not meet the criteria for what we were promised to be euthanasia, either active or passive:

• Alfie has not been diagnosed;

• The baby is not terminally ill in the sense that Charlie Gard was, but in a coma;

• The family has found another hospital willing to continue care, or at least continue to seek a diagnosis;

• If Alfie is unconscious, he is not suffering;

• The hospital, in essence, wants a court to declare that dying now is better than being severely cognitively disabled for an indeterminate period.

• By resisting the transfer, the hospital administration and doctors are essentially declaring that they do not want the child to have any chance of surviving.

     Further, the consequences are truly terrifying:

• “Futile care” impositions are not medical decisions, but values judgments about the benefit of continued care that is working, e.g., keeping the patient alive. The doctors and courts believe Alfie should die sooner rather than later, the parents want to keep trying to find what is causing their son’s cognitive collapse and to maintain his life regardless of whether a cure can be found.

• The judge ruled essentially that as a matter of law, Alfie is better off dead than in his current deeply troubling circumstances which include “semi-vegetative state” (whatever that means) accompanied by seizures and a degenerating condition. The parents disagree. Surely, in such cases they should have the final say, not strangers.

• Coercion destroys the peoples’ trust in the health-care system. This problem will grow more pronounced as the cost containment paradigm becomes increasingly backed by an iron fist.

• Health care is a major battle front in the culture wars that are roiling the West.

     As for now, alas, the culture of death is winning.

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