Alfie Evans in Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, Liverpool. Image: Ropi/Zuma Press/PA Images.
On April 28th, 23-month-old Alfie Evans died five days after his life support machine was switched off. The entwined web of legal, medical, and ethical issues brought to light by the case has provoked fierce reactions across the globe. On both sides of the Atlantic, the libertarian right have weaponsied Evan’s death to attack the NHS and British legal system, with figures like Nigel Farage branding it “state-sponsored euthanasia”. But contrary to their claims, this tragic story is not the result of government overreach. Rather, it is indicative of the damage being wrought to public services and human lives by the shrinking of the state, a policy that the right has vociferously fought for.
In the US, commentators such as Liz Wheeler, a host for the ultra conservative news network OAN, have sought to link Evan’s death to the UK’s universal health care system. But even if an American hospital was willing to keep Evans on life support, it would not be able to do so indefinitely given the financial burden on his parents. Regardless, the opinion of the international medical community is that the outcome would have been the same. Impartial medical experts offering opinions, available to read in the court judgements, comprehensively assessed any likelihood of recovery and found none; MRI scans of his brain found the majority of his brain was already crippled beyond repair. They submitted that Evans would never make any developmental progress (motor skills, vision, hearing, social, or emotional) and his illness was irreversible and terminal.
