Brain death

[motorbiking]

I can empathise with a parent who has to face losing a child, but I really wonder if the charity supporting the legal challenges one after the other have the family’s best interests.

If someone has suffered brian stem death, keeping their corpse “alive” on life support can’t help anyone.

Ultimately, if you can’t ever support your body without life support and have no brain activity, it’s time to let go and possibly put your body to good uses.

 

[Dork Lard]

It's a very emotive subject & I for one am glad that I'll never have to sit & judge such a case as Archie's.

One very similar & very emotive case a few years ago defied all logic. Everyone involved maintains their dignity, but a source very close to the family involved admitted privately to a journalist that the need to keep the child alive basically revolved around the £benefits that the immediate family were in receipt of !

 

[Notch7]

Ultimately, if you can’t ever support your body without life support and have no brain activity, it’s time to let go and possibly put your body to good uses

The mother believes her son responds to her, but my suspicion is it may just be involuntary.

 

[just pumps]

The book will be out on sale at christmas!

 

[ellal]

Our society has very strange ideas about the 'right to life'...

On one hand it is deemed ok to remove life support from a child even though they are albeit nominally alive...

And yet on the other hand the right to choose to die as an adult as and when that adult feels it right to do so before they reach the same state is refused...

One could be forgiven for thinking that whereas a child would require a lifetime of expensive care having not been able to financially contribute, an (often aged) adult with no quality of life is a person who could possibly be a financial boon what with the way their assets are rapidly depleted by the state...

I speak with experience of witnessing both sides of that.

 

[IT Minion]

I can empathise with a parent who has to face losing a child, but I really wonder if the charity supporting the legal challenges one after the other have the family’s best interests.

If someone has suffered brian stem death, keeping their corpse “alive” on life support can’t help anyone.

Ultimately, if you can’t ever support your body without life support and have no brain activity, it’s time to let go and possibly put your body to good uses.

I agree, although I'd lean more on the lack of brain activity.

If the brain is gone then everything that makes you a person rather than lump of meat is gone.

But people can have a life worth living even if their body can't survive without external support.

 

[Mottie]

A truly awful situation for the parent to be in. It's easy for someone unconnected to them to just say 'let him go' but I honestly don’t know what I would do in that situation.

From what I have read, his mother has accepted it and just wants Archie to go to a hospice to slowly slip away but she is being denied that. I don’t think that’s fair.

On a related matter, they say he was found like that at home after taking part in an online 'dare'. What was it and why aren’t they using that as a warning to other children?

 

[IT Minion]

From what I have read, his mother has accepted it and just wants Archie to go to a hospice to slowly slip away but she is being denied that. I don’t think that’s fair.

Hospices don't normally have ventilators and transfering a patient on one is very awkward, involved and risky. As far as I know it isn't done normally.

 

[mattylad]

It's an awful thing however I do think it's time to let the poor lad go.

Dragging it through various courts won't bring him back.

 

[securespark]

On a related matter, they say he was found like that at home after taking part in an online 'dare'. What was it and why aren’t they using that as a warning to other children?

I have read a couple of articles where she talks about it. Nothing is mentioned about the dare, but there were pleas for kids not to take part in any online dares.

 

[Notch7]

Our society has very strange ideas about the 'right to life'...

On one hand it is deemed ok to remove life support from a child even though they are albeit nominally alive...

And yet on the other hand the right to choose to die as an adult as and when that adult feels it right to do so before they reach the same state is refused...

One could be forgiven for thinking that whereas a child would require a lifetime of expensive care having not been able to financially contribute, an (often aged) adult with no quality of life is a person who could possibly be a financial boon what with the way their assets are rapidly depleted by the state...

I speak with experience of witnessing both sides of that.

I dont think that is very fair by making comparisions

the child has been on life support since April.

as for end of life care, we had that awful Liverpool pathway -thats was a horrible thing, I saw that with my mother

 

[Stivino]

I saw that with my mother

Me too, horrible, it should be illegal to do that to a human being.

 

[Justin Passing]

Our society has very strange ideas about the 'right to life'...

On one hand it is deemed ok to remove life support from a child even though they are albeit nominally alive...

And yet on the other hand the right to choose to die as an adult as and when that adult feels it right to do so before they reach the same state is refused...

It's not an equivalent.
If an oldie becomes brain-stem dead, there's no problem turning them off.

You're presenting completely different situations then complaining that they're treated differently.

 

[Notch7]

Apparently Archie died on the 31st May at midday.

 

[ellal]

It's not an equivalent.
If an oldie becomes brain-stem dead, there's no problem turning them off.

You're presenting completely different situations then complaining that they're treated differently.

No, what I'm saying is that different rules apply at different stages of life but in a perverse way...

Are you saying that someone who knows what they will become should have no right to end their life with dignity?

Or not realise that a relative who 'turned them off' would most likely end up in court?

And yet in the same breath deny the right of a parent to keep their child alive even if the hope of recovery is very slim?