IT CANNOT happen very often that,in an agonising saga that concerns a desperately sick small child, the Catholic bishops of the boy’s domestic city and country line up on one side of an argument, and with the pope,apparently, on the other, and along with two other European governments.
Nor does it often occur that a British judge,adjudicating on such a delicate and painful case, becomes so exasperated with the self-appointed advocates of the child that he calls one of them “fanatical and deluded.” Yet these were among the many bizarre and distressing features of the narrative of Alfie Evans, or a small boy of 23 months who died early on April 28th in a hospital in his native Liverpool.
Alfie was suffering from an undiagnosed brain disorder and was described by his doctors as being in a semi-vegetative state. The medical team at the Alder Hey hospital were of the firm opinion that keeping him alive on a ventilator was not “in his best interest” and that further treatment would be pointless and possibly cruel. His...
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Source: economist.com