Alfie Evans, Post Mortem

“The father understandably . . . really has no clear plan,” Justice Eleanor Warwick King (I can’t wish enough evil upon her) wrote on March 6 for a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. She was referring to Tom Evans, the father of Alfie Evans, in the course of forbidding him to transfer his son from Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool to Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome. Bambino Gesù’s treatment plan entailed the possibility that if it failed the boy could be transferred again, to a Munich hospital where doctors were prepared to care for him. “On one level,” King continued, Tom Evans

understands that neither Bambino Gesù nor Professor Hass in Munich are offering Alfie any hope for the future. The most they are offering is surgery in the form of a tracheostomy and gastrostomy, which would allow the possibility of his being ventilated at home, but that is not what the parents are asking for. It is clear and understandable that they have been unable to think through the disadvantages for them as a family to relocating either to Italy or Munich without the support of their extended families and unable to speak either language, in order to be able to spend Alfie’s last weeks or months in what they currently regard as a more empathetic environment. Mr Knafler [the family’s lawyer] was unable to help the court to understand why the father’s proposal involved Alfie being transferred to both Italy and Munich. [Emphasis added]