UK judges double down on mandate to pull infant off life support, denies parents' appeal to take baby to Italy

some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org to World News@lemmy.world – 2 points –
UK judges double down on mandate to pull infant off life support, denies parents' appeal to take baby to Italy
foxnews.com

If you live in the USA, this has Terri Schiavo-energy all around. It's different, I know. Terri was alive and braindead. This infant is gonna die. The court is sparing the infant pain.

But why would you keep a child alive to suffer? It's like Terri in that the parents refuse to think about anyone other than themselves. That's just cruel / terrible / bad.

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Are we really allowing articles from Fox News here now? FN clearly violates rule 3. Even if this particular story is sound, it just legitimizes them as an org and all of the other bonkers stuff they put out.

From your link:

Straight news reporting from beat reporters is generally fact-based and accurate, which earns them a Mixed factual rating.

My second point stands.

Just because an outlet that spews made up nonsense and outright lies throws you a factual bone once in a while, it doesn't make them credible. Hence the "low credibility "rating.

Fair point. I just fire up Google News and check headlines. Some are from Fox and some of those are fact-based. I didn't consider the source, only the content (though I do consider the source when I begin reading anything from Fox). I know they're mostly trash and lies.

Parents are grieving and I hesitate to judge their irrational actions because grief isn’t a logical process.

They think they’re saving their child by refusing to say good bye. Unfortunately they’re being enabled by people with political agendas.

First of all, there is no reason to believe that this child is doomed to a life of suffering. Palliative care has come a long way, and people with terminal illnesses can almost always be made comfortable until the end arrives.

Furthermore, Terri Schiavo was not braindead, she was in a vegetative state. When someone is declared braindead they are legally dead and will immediately be taken to the morgue (stopping by the operating room if they are an organ donor.)

Terri Schiavo could breathe on her own, so by definition she was not braindead. In the US, when someone is incapacitated their family is responsible for determining what medical care they would have wanted.

Schiavo's husband determined that she would not want life support. The courts supported his determination because he was her next of kin. If her husband had determined she wanted life support, the courts would have supported that too. That's markedly different from the decision making in the OP.

This has happened a couple times in the UK. It's a lot different than the USA for a few reasons, one being the NHS isn't gonna waste money on someone who has like a .0001% chance of recovery (and why should they?).

These decisions aren't about the cost of care, they're about the interests of the individual and, in this case, not prolonging suffering unnecessarily.

This issue is coming up that it won't be NHS resources being used because the baby will be in Italy using a Technically Private hospital, in Italy. There isn't a good reason to deny that, especially when the baby has Italian citizenship.

There is very good reason to deny it when it will only prolong suffering. That a fascist government has hopped on a Christo-fascist bandwagon is irrelevant. Her condition is incurable and she is suffering.

Non-Fox report here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/12/indi-gregory-critically-ill-baby-girl-removed-from-life-support

Last Monday, Indi was granted emergency Italian citizenship less than an hour before medical staff were due to withdraw life support treatment.

and here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-67378132

There is no reason to assume the child must be suffering. People with access to palliative care usually are not suffering, even if they have a terminal illness.

I'm not assuming anything. That is the basis of the medics' decision and the court's ruling.

If her doctors are unable to manage pain then her parents should be allowed to find doctors who can.

She isn't the first child with this disease, after all. And withdrawal of support is certainly not standard of care for patients like her.

So the baby should die in part... Because of politics? The rest of what you have is fair but really?

No. The baby should not be forced to suffer because of politics.

People with ALS also have a terminal condition that requires life support. Maybe the NHS will start removing their ventilators too, to spare them further suffering.