To the NHS, Expressing Doubt is a Capital Offense
Another sacrifice on the Altar of state-sponsored medicine is being prepared by the high priests of the British National Health Service (NHS), and this time, unlike the previous child sacrifices, the victim isn’t even wholly British.
As with earlier victims, Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans, the NHS can ill-afford to be proven wrong, their reputation for competence having been more roundly bruised and battered than a middle-aged, drunken bar patron foolishly entering an Ultimate Fighting event.
Socialized medicine relies on two essentials to remain upright. The first, legal compulsion for citizens to use their service (and ONLY their service) and secondly, maintaining a carefully cultivated, but entirely illusory, reputation for delivering world-class medical treatment.
Should either essential be significantly weakened, the system will topple, and with it, the second-most important means (the first is taxation) by which the British government rewards and punishes their subjects.
I wrote a great deal at the time about the tragic circumstances of Charlie Gard, and Alfie Evans, you may read more here, here, and here. Each young child was deemed superfluous by the doyens of the NHS, and no longer worthy of expense nor intervention.
Both children had alternatives. Both had offers of assistance from hospitals and specialists in other countries (the US included) and both could’ve been transferred at no expense to the NHS, yet the attending physicians in each case, along with the hospitals and HealthCare Trusts in charge, refused to let them leave the hospital.
They even sued the parents of both children, demanding they acquiesce to the demands of the “professionals,” and permit them to send the tots on their way to eternity without further ado.
In each case, the decisions had been made long before the court cases were filed, needing only a pro forma affirmation by a friendly Judge, which was swiftly given, albeit with much faux-handwringing and mock sorrow for the cameras.
The NHS had been challenged, and the NHS would not be denied. The children would die because the idea they might survive, or even recover, under the care of anyone else was an unthinkable outcome. To the leather-hearted, government-owned leviathan of medical hegemony, the NHS, continued belief in their inerrancy overrode the rights of these children to seek treatment from someone who had not yet declared them to be simply too much bother. The system cannot be “second-guessed.”
In the case of Alfie Evans, the system gave up on him at first glance. For more than a year, the hospital simply warehoused the boy, offering no treatment whatsoever while they impatiently waited for the child to give up and die. He did not. Eventually, his parents sought a second opinion.
In the NHS, second opinions are given by a physician chosen by the attending physician, not by the patient, or the parents. Needless to say, such an arrangement almost always leads to the rubber-stamping of initial diagnoses, as each doctor is loathe to alienate either their colleagues or the hospital that employs them.
The NHS crassly points to the very low rate of differing second opinions as evidence of “getting it right the first time,” going so far as to trumpet these numbers whenever their competence is questioned.
Through it all, young Alfie fought, and despite abominable treatment, continued to survive and grow, although fighting for every breath, because the NHS refused to perform a tracheostomy to ease his respiration. If the child is marked for death, the last thing the NHS would approve of would be prolonging his life.
You see, when gross malpractice occurs in a private setting, people are held accountable, and tragedies are often averted. However, when gross malpractice is backed by the full faith and power of a national government desperate to avoid embarrassment, it becomes just another byproduct of policy, individual consequences be damned.
To hide their malfeasance, the hospital loaded young Alfie full of anti-seizure medications, sedating him to the point of near-death, then pointed to his prolonged lethargy as evidence of his hopeless condition. Over the objections of Alfie’s parents, (and several governments around the globe, such as the United States and Italy) the ghouls of socialized medicine got their prize in the end, the lifeless body of an innocent child, sacrificed to the god of expediency and keeping up appearances.
This time around, the NHS has apparently bought into its own hype, believing themselves to be the ultimate arbiter of life itself, not merely for its own captive citizens, but for anyone caught in its clutches.
Two year old Alta Fixler, a girl born in the UK to ultra-Orthodox, religiously observant Jewish parents, has dual Israeli/British citizenship, as her parents are both Israelis. She suffered an undisclosed brain injury at birth (at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital-UK, where she yet resides) and has been on a respirator ever since.
She is unable to eat, drink or breathe on her own. She has profound brain damage, which appears to be irreversible with current treatment and technology. The hospital has decided she has “no hope of ever getting any better,” and have petitioned the court to force the parents to let them withdraw her life support.
Unlike Charlie Gard, and Alfie Evans before her, young Alta does appear beyond the help of medical intervention, aside from life support. In this instance, the attending physicians may indeed be correct, that she will never improve, but there is more to be considered if we are to reckon ourselves a decent and compassionate society.
Alta’s parents hold to a religious belief system that doesn’t permit what the NHS is advocating. To them, allowing the NHS to do as they wish puts their daughter’s immortal soul in jeopardy. To avoid this circumstance, Alta’s parents merely want to take her home to Israel, where she can be cared for by people who share their religious faith, and who will honor the exigencies of their beliefs.
Insistent, and arrogant, the HealthCare Trust that oversees Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital has repeatedly turned to the courts for a “determination of the child’s best interests,” the same sort of suit filed to end the lives of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans.
True to form, the Justice hearing the motion has sided with the hospital, as they do with near-perfect regularity, and have granted the hospital permission to overrule the parent’s wishes, religious beliefs and even their Israeli citizenship.
The only thing standing between little Alta and death at the hands of a preening government agency, is public sentiment, and the recent involvement of the Israeli government.
Both the Israeli Health Minister, Yuli Edelstein, and the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, have reached out to broker a solution. The Health Minister via administrative/legal channels, and the President, through a personal letter to Prince Charles, making an emotional plea on humanitarian grounds, to honor the religious beliefs of three of his citizens.
As of this writing, neither plea has moved the glaciered heart of the British medical administrative behemoth. Like Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans before her, the NHS have set their mark on the life of little Alta Fixler, and absent direct Royal, Judicial or Parliamentary intervention, they will have their prize.
Once again the world will know the socialist leviathan that is the British National Health Service, will not be questioned, because it can never be wrong. To do so, is an offense worthy of capital punishment.