Regarding this section of your essay: “36 hours later, the second claim has been definitively refuted — at this writing, Alfie is still alive and still breathing on his own. So why on Earth would anyone believe the first claim anymore? Nobody even knows what condition Alfie has, yet these “experts” who couldn’t even let him die correctly are telling us with certainty that there is no possibility of recovery, now or in the future?”

From my posts on Caitlyn’s wall:
Although one point of medical clarification — most neurological diseases, especially degenerative ones, can only be accurately diagnosed after death and an autopsy is performed — even for diseases we know well what they are and can treat. For example, Alzheimer’s is not diagnosed formally and medically until after death and autopsy. So once an autopsy is done, it is likely the boy suffers from a medically known, but extremely rare condition.

Does suffering with no hope of cure mean that a person should be kept alive for the sake of being alive? Its not as if the doctors in Italy have some secret medical breakthrough that can reverse the disease — they all are looking at the same research and treatments as British doctors are. And again, there is no medical treatment or cure that can regrow regions of the brain, so medically and scientifically, there is nothing that could be done for him, as tragic as that is. So the question the courts wrestled with was should we allow the boy to be kept alive, vegitativly and brain-dead (or near brain dead and likely suffering greatly), in order to appease the parents, or, should the boy be allowed to find his peace in the afterlife and suffer no more?

He may be biologically alive yes, but brain dead. The part of his brain still functioning is likely the Cerebellum, Medulla and Pons, which are the part of the brain at the stem where the spinal chord connects to the greater brain. This region of the brain is the most primitive part of the brain, and is responsible for basic biological functions (breathing/heartbeat/etc), the pons specifically. It is likely this part of the brain has not been significantly damaged. However, once brain-death occurs, it is permanent. So it is possible to have someone be biologically alive (breathing, although it sounds like it is heavily labored and in difficulty, so the disease is likely starting to impact and degenerate the final region of the brain) but still be essentially dead. In the US at least, often when brain death occurs, doctors will keep the person biologically alive for a few hours longer so they can effect a organ harvesting operation to allow someone else to get life saving organ donation, assuming the person is a donor.

I agree with both you and David Riehm in that if the parents can afford (or are sponsored by another entity like Italy/Vatican) a medical transfer to Italy, or to hospice or home, they should be allowed to transfer their son wherever they want. Where I have trouble is if the parents wanted the hospital to keep providing tax-payer funded care (including medical transfer) above and beyond what is medically reasonable with the clearly terminal prognosis.

What I don’t understand is the hospital standing in the way of the parents’ right to move their son…the only thing I can think of is that maybe over there in the UK their human-rights-laws consider it something like cruel and unusual punishment to keep a person alive longer than medically necessary when it will only increase their suffering due to a clearly terminal disease. But I’m not a lawyer in any country.

Something else I thought of last night, are the resources being used to keep him alive being unjustly used in keeping him alive, when there are other patients whose lives could be saved with those resources? Are the parent’s acting selfishly by demanding further treatment even though it is medically clear the boy is a goner? Are there children whose lives could be saved if Alfie’s parents consented to organ donation?
(https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2018/04/while-we-slept-human-achievement-marched-on/ )

Finally, one last question (which I preface by saying is not sarcastic or in jest). From what I’ve learned from speaking with you guys on other threads, the RCC is against condom use basically because it is man interfering and interrupting God’s plans, if I’m understanding that right. Could keeping this boy on life-support in order for the parents to feel good essentially (since there is nothing medically that done to heal the brain that is so far damaged) be basically the same thing, interfering with God’s plans, on the other end of the life spectrum? Interfering with the end of life, instead of the beginning? It seems to me, for whatever reason, the boy has clearly been chosen to join the almighty in the afterlife with being afflicted by such an insidious disease that literally destroys, degrades and degenerates the brain.