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April 27, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:50
4071 The Ugly Truth About The Alfie Evans Controversy
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So it looks like it's time for philosophy to bring its clarity to this situation with the young boy in England, Alfie Evans.
Now Alfie Evans was born on the 9th of May 2016, so I guess he would be coming up for almost two years old.
This is from some of the court rulings.
Alfie's mother was then 18 years old and this was her first pregnancy.
Alfie's father Tom was 19 years of age Although self-evidently very young, and though Alfie had not been planned, his parents were delighted by him.
The first indication that all might not be well occurred in July 2016 when Alfie was noted to have a divergent squint for which a hospital referral was considered appropriate.
He was seen again by his general practitioner at four months for his first child development check.
It is clear that M, the mother, already had some concerns about her son's general development.
Alfie's smile had become less frequent.
He was sleeping to an extent that had begun to alarm her, and quite commonly she had to wake him up.
She was concerned too with Alfie's lack of general interaction and disinclination to reach out for or play with his toys.
I sense, this is the judge, I sense also that M considered that the squint was something rather more serious.
She queried Alfie's ability to see.
It is apparent that concern was shared by others.
The health visitor was troubled by Alfie's lack of age-appropriate head control.
By six months of age, there was no doubt that Alfie was showing marked signs of significant developmental delay.
He was reviewed in the General Pediatric Outpatient Clinic in Alder Hay Hospital in November 2016.
On examination, he was there found to be functioning in a range appropriate for a six-week to two-month-old infant.
On 14th December 2016, Alfie was admitted to Alder Hay Accident and Emergency Department with a history of coughing, high temperature, and a reported episode of rhythmic jerking of all four limbs and his jaw.
And you can dig in if you want to the details about the decline in the baby boy But by January 2017, Professor Cross, of course, one of the carers, Professor Cross was clear that there was little in the way of reactive response from Alfie.
The EEG, she told me, was markedly attenuated, which she clarified as essentially flat.
Professor Cross concluded that Alfie has a progressive, ultimately fatal neurodegenerative condition, most likely.
Mitochondrial disorder.
During her cross-examination by F, the father, she told him in gentle terms that even if it were possible to stop Alfie's seizures, which did not look likely given his poor response to anticonvulsant treatment, to date his brain is entirely beyond recovery.
The brain, she said, simply has no capacity to regenerate itself, unlike e.g.
the liver. Professor Cross noted the deterioration in Alfie's respiratory effort.
It is unlikely that he can breathe now without assistance.
She factored in the dramatic deterioration in the EEG scans.
All this, she concluded, pointed to a mitochondrial disorder.
This, she recognized, had now been further supported by tests indicating mitochondrial genetic mutation.
Nothing In the brain, in Alfie's brain, was functioning normally.
Professor Cross considered that the brain was now only able to generate seizures.
Accordingly, this was not an epileptic encephalopathy, by which Professor Cross explained that the epileptic seizures are not contributing to the neurological degeneration, but a consequence of the neurodegenerative disorder.
And the judge said that this requires particular emphasis, and I quote, All investigations have been performed that would have demonstrated a remediable or treatable cause, and even if at this stage there was something to treat his brain, the neurological function will not show any degree of recovery.
I appreciate this news will be extremely difficult for the family.
I do not feel further therapy is going to have an impact on seizures, and even if seizures were reduced, this is not going to change Alfie's outcome.
This is also from the report.
It is my opinion and that of my intensive care consultant colleagues that Alfie has a poor quality of life.
He is completely dependent on mechanical ventilation to preserve his life.
He has no spontaneous movements, cannot communicate, and continues to have frequent seizures.
I believe that it is unlikely that Alfie feels pain or has sensation of discomfort, but I cannot be completely certain of this, since Alfie has no way of communicating if he is in pain or discomfort.
I believe that given Alfie's very poor prognosis with no possible curative treatment and no prospect of recovery, the continuation of active intensive care treatment is futile and may well be causing him distress and suffering.
It is therefore my opinion that it is not in Alfie's best interest to further prolong the current invasive treatment.
It would, in my opinion, be appropriate to withdraw intensive care support and provide palliative care for Alfie for the remainder of his life.
And the degree to which Alfie's brain has been destroyed by this ailment seems to me, I'm no doctor, it just seems to me pretty catastrophic.
And here's another quote from the report.
The scan of 2nd February 2018 confirmed the progressive destruction of the white matter of the brain, which Dr.
R. interpreted as now appearing almost identical to water and cerebrospinal fluid.
In addition, new areas of signal abnormality were demonstrated in the deep gray matter of the basal ganglia.
The thalami, which I have been told, fire the pathways within the white matter which generate sensory perceptions, is, Dr.
R points out, effectively invisible in the scan.
In simpler terms, the thalami, basal ganglia, the vast majority of the white matter of the brain, and a significant degree of the cortex have been wiped out by this remorseless degenerative condition.
So it seems like significant portions of his brain are indistinguishable from cerebrospinal fluid or water.
I quote, He does not show any spontaneous movements.
His motor responses are either of an epileptic nature or are spinal reflexes.
He is deeply comatose and for all intents and purposes therefore unaware of his surroundings.
Although fluctuating, his pupillary responses are abnormal with now only the most subtle, very brief dilation to exposure to light but no normal constriction.
Exposure to loud noises does not elicit any response.
There is no response to central painful stimuli other than the occasional seizure.
There is no response to painful peripheral stimuli other than seizures or at times spinal reflexes with extension and internal rotation of his arms and less frequently now of flexion of his legs.
Alfie is profoundly Hypotonic, low muscle tension at rest.
Deep tendon reflexes are absent.
There is no ankle myoclonus and no evidence for spasticity, movement-induced increase in tone.
Alfie has also had a number of urinary tract infections which have been treated with antibiotics.
He continues arm prophylactic trimethyroprim to prevent further urinary tract infections.
And I quote, Alfie does not show any visual behavior, suggesting a most severe visual impairment, blindness, although the full extent of this is impossible to determine as Alfie is unable to communicate.
Alfie does not show any evidence of response to auditory stimuli.
Whilst there is no reason to believe that Alfie's inner ears are dysfunctional, the pathways and cortical centers that are required to process auditory information transmitted from the inner ear to the cortex are likely to be dysfunctional.
Alfie is likely to have severe hearing impairments and is possibly deaf.
This means in his case that his brain cannot interpret sounds entering his ear, Rather than sound, doesn't get past his ear.
Alfie is unlikely to be able to tell or interpret auditory stimuli, i.e.
reassuring voices or general noise on the PICU. Alfie is entirely unable to communicate with this environment.
He will never develop any communication either verbally or with sign language.
As Alfie is unable to communicate, it is important to consider whether, despite his inability to respond, Alfie may still have some awareness of pain and discomfort, and this should therefore be kept to an absolute minimum, considering that he might still be able to, quote, feel, end quote, uncomfortable sensation.
I think it is unlikely that Alfie has any ability to be reassured by the voices and touch of his parents.
One of his doctors has repeatedly emphasized, quote, the volume of the brain has not expanded.
Brain tissue has been replaced in equal measure with a combination of water and CSF. Talking about moving, the discussion is that the moving is risky and he might die in transit and so on and very expensive.
One estimate Is that 14 days, which would be required, including surgery, would be about 65,000 euros.
Now, both the parents are Roman Catholics, and here's the quote.
I'm very much aware, from the judge, I'm very much aware that both parents are Roman Catholics brought up in that tradition.
They do not present themselves as devout or observant, but it is obvious to me that their faith plays a part in their life and sustains them both at this very difficult time.
In his closing remarks, F, the father, said that Alfie is, quote, our child and a child of God.
It is important that these beliefs are considered within the broad gamut of relevant factors to which I have alluded and which collectively illuminate where Alfie's best interests lie.
And the MRI scans of the thalamite which regulate the pathways of the brain have almost entirely disappeared.
I'm no doctor. I'm no lawyer.
I'm just going to tell you.
And of course, I mean, my heart goes out to the parents.
This is an agony that is scarcely to be imagined.
And, you know, one of the terrible things that's happened with just the government's ability to create money out of thin air, to print money, to borrow money...
Is that the natural weighing of resources within society has kind of vanished.
And now, any suggestion that resources be restrained in any particular area is just viewed as mean.
Like you have all the food in the world, why wouldn't you feed everyone who's hungry?
If you don't want to feed someone who's hungry while you have all the food in the world, you just must be mean and like to watch people go hungry for no reason.
But two basics of economics have been lost along the way somewhere.
The first, of course, is that all human desires are infinite.
And the second is that all resources are finite.
And this combination of the two, that we have infinite desires and requirements, and we have finite resources, is why there is such a thing as economics.
It is undoubtedly true that the resources being devoted to Alfie are resources unable to be devoted to other children who have some chance of recovery, some prognosis of a future productive life.
And this is the great challenge.
And it is, you know, it's one of these just...
Grow up situations.
We don't have infinite resources in society.
We don't have... We kind of believe we do because we wave this magic, satanic Disney wand of desire and things just materialize.
Oh, we get socialized healthcare.
Bernie Sanders wants to give free government jobs to everyone and their dog.
And why not just take in all the refugees and displaced peoples and unhappy peoples with their local environment all over the world?
And why not dump billions of dollars into...
Africa, which is what, like 140 times the size of Europe, but still Africans have to, like, we just have this, like, why wouldn't you want to give free college to everyone?
You're mean if you don't.
And we like these weird delusional trust fund derangement syndrome.
Like, we can just have everything and do everything, and we can pour resources and keep everyone alive, and no one should suffer, and no one should...
Be short of anything. That is not realistic.
We have more wealth than any other human society throughout history, which has unfortunately allowed us to outstrip that wealth by using the wealth that we have and the wealth we expect to gather from future taxpayers as collateral to borrow to a near infinity and to put Every single man, woman, and child in the world, about 30,000 US dollars into debt.
We rain down massive resources into the third world, which cause huge population growths in the third world, which then cause spillover, and then we make life in the third world, and then we bomb life in the third world.
this is horrifying stuff.
We do have limited resources.
We don't feel that at the moment, but we do.
And the question of where resources get placed in society, this boy has had significant portions of his brain eaten away by this terrible degenerative ailment and replaced with water and CSF. His brain can't grow.
His brain can't heal.
He seems to be deaf and blind and in a coma.
There's no future that anyone can see.
And he may be suffering, but nobody knows.
But there's no way out, according to what I've read.
So what could be done?
One of the things that I find so horribly tragic about things like allowing the government to take over control of your healthcare, here we have a collision of two belief systems or two mental structures.
One is, of course, the Roman Catholicism, wherein the parents believe that the child has a soul and that all life is precious, and there really should be no limit to the expenditures that you're willing for other people to make.
In order to keep your child breathing, even though the child appears to be, to all intents and purposes, long gone from his body.
So we have this Roman Catholicism combined or colliding with the socialized medicine that occurs with England, right?
Where it's government-run healthcare.
So where can the negotiation occur?
Because you have Religiosity, and this is fairly fundamental, religiosity colliding with the coercive-based socialized healthcare system.
The parents, of course, wish to—I mean, there's hints in the document of not taking legal representation, not filing stuff on time.
It seems to have this attempt to buy time.
And, I mean, the last thing I'd want to do is tell people how to handle something like this.
I mean, it is very, very difficult.
It's unbelievably difficult to handle.
But I always wonder whether or not this kind of—we can just pour infinite resources into everything— Maybe tell me.
I don't feel cold-hearted.
Maybe I'm being cold-hearted, but I don't feel that way.
It's not an argument, I know.
I'm just being honest and just telling you what's going on.
But isn't this just a way of dragging out the death?
The child can't survive on its own?
There's not much of a brain left in there.
There's no possibility of cure.
The degeneration, I assume, is simply going to continue.
But even if it didn't, as they say, you can't regrow the brain.
So isn't this a terrible way of dragging out what is inevitable, which is that the child is not going to survive?
This is also part of the virtue signaling that goes on in the world.
You know, mass immigration and from the third world in particular, refugees and economic opportunists pouring in from the third world come with a lot of health issues.
A lot of cousin marriage in the third world comes with genetic issues, which has been talked about by some British MPs.
The system in England, as in Canada and other places that are accepting massive amounts of immigration, the US as well, the system was designed for a certain amount of people.
And if you...
If there's a baby boom, you have years in which to start to build up the infrastructure, particularly school, you know, five years or six years, to build up the infrastructure and so on.
But when you have people crashing in, bringing entire families, full-grown, ready to use all the systems in the known universe, you can't...
It's not built for that. It's not built for that.
But because people can wish all these wonderful things, like, let's keep this child alive, and let's take in all the refugees, and let's have free healthcare, and let's have free education, and let's do this.
It's a deluded state of fantasia, of fantasy.
Now, the parents, of course, how would these things be decided in a free society?
And I've thought about that, because, you know, people, they do say to me, and it's a fair thing, oh, I need to talk more about solutions.
Well, In a free society, you would take out insurance against these kinds of things, and there would be very specific requirements or standards kept in place for, like you would have, I call them dispute resolution organizations, or DROs.
Some people call them DROs. Dispute resolution organizations, those who run the contracts that run your life.
I mean, you could say healthcare insurance, but that's been so corrupted by state interference in the remnants of it in the West, in America in particular, that, of course, it's become so negative for a lot of people, it doesn't really help.
So let's say, in a free society, the government is not there, in a free society, these kinds of things can occur.
You can buy insurance for just about anything if you want.
So Betty Grable's legs were insured.
I'm sure Rush Limbaugh's voice is insured and so on.
But you can buy insurance for just about anything.
And if you were in a free society and you wanted to have a baby, then you would simply buy the level of insurance that, you know, that may be genetic testing, maybe genetic counseling and so on and You would then get various prices for the insurance should something terrible like this happen.
And if you bought cheaper insurance, then there would be less money devoted to the sustainability of your child should your child pass the point of no return, as it seems Alfie has.
And what nobody would then...
See, it's the gun.
It's the gun. It's the gun.
It's the gun that is always the problem in these situations.
You know, you can't help but look at these row of English policemen, I guess, taking breaks from scanning Twitter.
Actually, no, they are scanning Twitter for people saying anything negative about this so that they can...
Go and harass them. It's the gun that's always the problem.
Anyone who sees a row of policemen guarding the hospital because the parents want to take the kid to Italy.
I think they communicated with the Pope and Italy has given Alfie citizenship and they want to try and get him there.
But because of this situation and the ruling, the government is not allowing them to take their child.
That's terrible. That's terrible.
While I don't necessarily agree with the argument or the idea of keeping the remnants of this child, the shell of this child alive when he may be suffering and has no chance of recovery, that's a whole other issue.
What I really, really loathe and hate in all of this is the presence of all this coercion.
So the money that is used to pay for this child's life support and all the healthcare and all the experts and all of this Hundreds of thousands of pounds, I have no doubt.
That's all taken from the population by force, or even worse, taken from the next generation through debt.
Or even worse, no, equally worse, is taken from the poor through money printing, through inflation, through the deterioration of the value of the pounds that they hold.
And so, in a voluntary society, in a free society, in a stateless society, what you would have, of course, is you would have a contract.
And the contract would say, here are the conditions under which your child will get all the health care.
You know, and there would be things spelled out, and you would review it, and you would sign it, and you would understand it.
And then, if healthcare issues occurred for your child that were within the bounds of the contract, then the DRO would pay for the healthcare.
That would just be part of the insurance that you had paid for.
And if they then, if something like this happened, which you could, I'm sure, buy insurance even for this.
Although the morality then of keeping the shell of a child alive when it could be in potential pain has no chance of recovery.
I mean, that becomes ethically questionable.
And I think we can all understand, like if we take the state out of the equation, which is in general my goal, take the state out of the equation, the ethics of this are extraordinarily complicated.
But in this particular situation, where there's no regeneration possible, where there's no future possible, deaf, dumb, blind, insensate, semi-comatose, little of the brain left as far as I can see, Where's the future?
Where's the future?
What's the point? And what are the costs?
Again, because there are other children who can survive, who aren't getting treatment, or whose treatment is getting delayed because of the resources being poured into this shell of a boy with no chance of recovery, no chance of any kind of life, in a semi-vegetative state, I think. So the opportunity cost, we don't see that either.
Is it fair for this child with no chance of recovery to take resources from other children, the delay of whose access to those resources might cause fatalities or significant ailments?
In those other children, everything is a cost and a benefit.
Everything is a benefit and a cost.
And if you only look at the cost and not the benefits, you can look at the benefits and not the costs, then you are not thinking, you are posing, you are morally posturing, you are virtue signaling, as they say.
In a free society, If you wished to keep your child alive outside the bounds of the insurance you had bought, then you could, of course, go and raise money.
You could borrow, you could go to your church, you could go to your community, you could go to your whatever group you belong to, and you could attempt to gain resources in order to keep your child alive.
You would also, of course, have to find a doctor who was willing to do that, which may be another challenge, because you could not use force To compel the general population to pay for the healthcare you wanted.
You could not use force to force a doctor to provide the healthcare you wanted.
But you could use all voluntary means at your disposal to get what you wanted.
That's the way things should work in a free society.
If you say to a parent, and I can't even imagine what it's like to be in this position.
My heart goes out to these parents, of course.
Horrifying. If you say to a parent, basically, can we pull the plug on your child?
What is the parent supposed to say?
To put this burden on the parent is so appalling.
And of course, can we expect clear, objective rationality from the parents in this situation?
And of course not. I mean, our heart and our minds are so bound up in the bond that we can see, right?
No, we can't. And this is why the decision has to go sometimes elsewhere.
Now here it happens to have gone to a judge who's made a ruling and in other places it would go in a free society would go to your dispute resolution organization, your insurance carrier, who would then say we can't pay anymore now.
If you don't have the money to pay and if other people are like you know I could donate to you to keep the shell of your child alive or I could donate to cancer research or I could donate to something else where Real medical benefits can come out of it and people can survive, people can flourish and we can add to the benefit of conscious minds in the world.
You have to make that case.
And at some point if the insurance company won't pay and if people won't donate and maybe you can't get doctors To perform whatever mechanics are necessary to keep your child or the shell of your child alive, then what happens is you can get some kind of closure.
I mean, I think we've all had these decisions, haven't you, where it's like the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak.
The decision where, you know, like I don't mean to trivialize it, but I'm just trying to sort of frame it in a way that people have experienced.
You know, you're trying to decide whether to stay in some romantic relationship or not.
And it's like, well, I can live with this, and that's not great.
And then at some point, something happens, and you're like, okay, I gotta let it go.
I gotta get out.
And then what formerly seemed like pleasant scuba diving with infinite air becomes like a pearl diver with a knife between your teeth, struggling to not go faster than the bubbles to get to the surface.
So we need help.
We need outside...
Restrictions to help us make our decisions.
And if suddenly it was like, well, we can't afford it because now the bill to keep this child alive for another 14 days is 65,000 euros, which we don't have.
And we can't raise it because people think it's kind of an understandable but futile fool's quest and delays the grieving and so on.
All of these things are so complex that they need to be negotiated.
They need to be negotiated.
And once the gun is in the room, the negotiations are essentially at an end.
And that, to me, is where all of this stuff is occurring.
The moment that you're forcing people to do something, you're violating their free will, you're violating ethics, and just these kinds of horrible situations are going to arise.
Everything is rationed.
Life is rationed. Time is rationed.
I am recording this video rather than spending time with my family.
Everything is rationed.
When the government controls healthcare, you don't get infinite healthcare.
You just get rationing of a different kind.
You get rationing, so in Canada, there are...
I once asked...
I needed a referral to a specialist.
They said it was going to take me 15 months.
15 months.
Nothing is free, you understand?
Nothing is free.
Everything must be balanced.
There are costs and benefits. Everything is limited.
Our desires are infinite.
Rationing is always going to occur.
We must place our social resources where they will do the most good, and nobody knows exactly what that is or how that is going to be.
It must be negotiated, which means taking The gun out of the room, taking the violence out of the situation, the violence that forces people to pay for health care, the violence that prevents people from taking their child out of the country.
The gun in the room is the problem.
If we can't see that, it is somewhat ironic that there is this Enormous compassion and care and concern over this boy, who seems, to all intents and purposes, to be long gone from his skull.
While at the same time, I looked up a little bit about the British government and its relationship to abortion.
In 2017, it was reported that the UK, United Kingdom, will pay $1.3 billion to fund abortions and contraception around the world.
Well, the fetus has a future, in a way that Alfie does not, sadly.
But we have no problem crushing the skulls of the fetus and sucking it out in a tube, throwing it in a dumpster, or sometimes it seems putting it on e-baby.
In 2017, the British government said it will fund abortions in England for women arriving from Northern Ireland, where the practice is illegal, after there was a threat of a parliamentary revolt.
Now, regarding the $1.3 billion to fund abortions and contraception around the world, there was a recent poll, 65% of citizens in the UK do not want their taxes used for abortion overseas.
These are all very complicated issues.
And I do hear people say, well, what's your solution?
What's your system? What's your structure?
What's your answer? To me, the answer is always the same.
And it's something we really, really need to understand.
I don't know what the future of this boy should be.
I don't know the best way to help the poor.
I don't know the best way that people should get healthcare.
I don't know the best way that people should get healthcare and resources in their retirement.
I don't know the best way that national defense should occur.
I don't know any of these things.
Which is why we need freedom.
Which is why we need continual negotiation.
Which is why we need choice.
There was an old delusion in communism, roundly disproved by Ludwig von Mises back in the 1920s.
Without the price mechanism, without supply and demand, right?
If something, if people want something in a particular area and it's not there, then they'll bid up the price of it, which will draw resources to that area.
And without the price mechanism, without The free flow of supply and demand.
Without a free market, you can't possibly allocate resources.
It can never be a push.
It's like pushing a piece of string.
You can pull a piece of string, you can't push it and get anywhere.
That we need freedom.
We need to be adults.
We need to grow up and understand that all resources are finite and all of our desires are limitless.
Nobody knows How many ingots of iron should be delivered to Vladivostok next Thursday?
Nobody knows. Now, if there's a price signal, if you can do it profitably, who knows?
We've lost our humility in Fiat Geiser dreams Of infinite resources.
We've lost our capacity to negotiate.
Now we bully and we propagandize and we attack and we assault.
We try to destroy people's reputations who disagree with us.
We're not negotiating about anything anymore.
The language of adulthood is negotiation.
I don't know the perfect world.
You don't know the perfect world.
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