Sandstorm Scholar

Make no mistake about it, I’m not claiming anything can be done for Alfie…but I do believe in miracles and I do believe that as long as you are alive you have hope. What is dying, along with Alfie, is freedom. The larger point here is that the totalitarian regime that has taken hold in Britain has decided that some nebulous body of quacks is better suited to decide the fate of this boy that the parents. And, to enforce this petty tyranny, they have gone to court to ensure they will be proven right by the simple method of killing Alfie Evans by deprivation of water and food.

This is not the first time this has happened. In July of last year, 11-month-old Charlie Gard was removed from life support after another batch of doctors determined that he was unlikely to benefit from an experimental treatment. Apparently, the exact meaning of the word “experimental” was lost on them.

While there is no doubt whatsoever that A driving force in these decisions is cost–you can bet the British hospital system is run just like a military motor pool, where every vehicle is assigned a repair budget based on its age and when it exceeds that budget it goes to scrap yard–the cost is secondary. The real issue is control and sending a message to the proles that their pretensions to equality will not be tolerated. When one looks at the education and socio-economic class of the parents of both Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, it his hard to escape the conclusion that the hospital system and courts acting in this way has as much to do with saying the parents just aren’t bright enough to make decisions for their children as it does with any high minded principle of health care.

Unsurprisingly, the system is not infallible. In fact, because it is a system developed in Britain, it barely works.

Let’s consider the case of Aysha King.

Aysha was a five-year-old boy who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He underwent successful surgery and the medical team wanted to put him on radiation treatment as a follow up. His parents balked. If you’ve ever know someone who received radiation treatment in the head region you’ll understand why. The wanted access to an experimental proton therapy. None was available in Britain, but the National Health Service had paid for this treatment in other medical centers in Europe. The parents and hospital were at loggerheads. On August 28, 2014, the parents took their son from the hospital and hopped a train for France. Britain issued an arrest warrant for them and instituted an international manhunt. The family was located in Spain two days later. The parents were arrested and held for over 24-hours before sanity, since deceased, prevailed in Britain and a decision was made to not extradite the couple. The case went to Britain’s High Court which ruled Aysha could receive the desired therapy at a hospital in Prague. Aysha is a fully functioning kid and cancer free. Radiation therapy almost certainly would have meant that would not be the case.

Again we see the same model. There is no idea of informed consent. There is no respect for the responsibility parents have to make decisions for their children. The difference here is that the Kings seem to be (I say seem because I simply can’t find any biographical information on the parents) to be more educated that the Gards and Evanses. They were smart enough to know they couldn’t fight the system and the the resources to win. They were sympathetic enough that Prime Minister David Cameron intervened to prevent extradition.

When you take this into context with Britain jihad against free speech, its war on any form of self defense, and it’s cultural self-loathing one has to wonder if it even has the will to exist