Archie Battersbee case

[whynotwhatknot]

I was just wondering why we're not allowed to post about this case-the deletion message mentioned it was ongoing so wouldnt be fair to the family

Charlie gards case was on going and there was numerous threads about it

Anyway if this stands maybe we can discuss

The problem with the CoA just undertaking a best interests assessment on the day of the appeal, was that the Guardian hadn't addressed this properly in her report (which she is required to do so) So they had no expert evidence as to best interests. They didn't want to prolong the proceedings by making a half attempt at the assessment themselves (thus being appealed themselves!) so tightly appointed a new Guardian to undertake a new report to be done correctly with only a short delay. I think it's a matter of dotting the i's and crossing the t's!

I agree that it’s dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and there is value in that given what’s at stake, and they maybe could have been appealed if they had done it on the day - I just don’t think a Guardian’s report here is going to add much. Usually a Guardian is the court’s eyes and ears and speaks to the child and the family but here I’m not sure the Guardian will tell the court anything they don’t already know. Maybe more detail about his religious beliefs, but I think that evidence is already before the court.

I just fear for Alfie he may suffer a sudden death in the meantime, which I believe to be a genuine medical possibility.

@Cantanka I get that, but the law says the guardian needs to provide a written report stating the best interests of the child. The CoA really doesn't have an option in this.

It's sad and can see why they would have a hard time accepting. The narrative still is he is fine and the hopsital are lying about his situation

The family are treating it as a massive win but they don't seem to realise the CoA have just rerouted to a simpler way to bring the case to a conclusion. They won the battle and lost the war on the day of that appeal hearing.

So what's going to happen now ?
Will there be a date when his life support has to be switched off?
I don't meant to be so blunt I just remember in the Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans the families seemed to get a few appeals
I really do feel for his mum though despite how she's behaving objectively I can see that he's brain dead and nothing will change that, but as a mother it must be so hard.

So what's going to happen now ?
Will there be a date when his life support has to be switched off?

Im optimistic it’ll be wrapped up on Monday.

It reads to me as though the appellant judges feel the High Court judge erred in making a clinical diagnosis (death) but should have applied the same medical tests and opinions and redirected it to clinical outcome (best interests). Pragmatically it amounts to the same thing, as he is dead and his prognosis Is death, but it means there’s no legal overreach..

The sad part is that, 3 months later, it will take the court to make the sort of common sense decision most parents would make in conjunction with the medical team.

Mind you, under the guidance of the Christian Legal Team, I still expect the family to argue that their faith means a “beating heart is a living soul” which is what a few US states adhere to, for families with strong religious beliefs..

The members of the Archie’s Army are just disgusting. And stupid, as goes without saying.

They seem to have moved on from accusing the doctors of trying to kill Archie off, to now saying the nurses are also trying to kill him because they can’t be bothered to look after him.

I mean, seriously, what planet are these people living on?

The page should be closed down for the disgusting and slanderous accusations everyone is making towards the hospital and it’s staff.

Can you imagine being a nurse on that unit having to come into work every day with the prospect of having to care for Archie and be in fear of what you may be accused of. It’s so wrong.

Many of them are clearly not very bright and can't grasp the difference between brain dead and a coma
Thankfully they don't get to make any decisions.

I hope they dont get it based on that would set an awful precedent loads of dead people on ventilators just lying there

Many of them are clearly not very bright and can't grasp the difference between brain dead and a coma. Thankfully they don't get to make any decisions

Part of me hopes they are just getting carried away with it all, enjoying being part of the circus, and that they don’t actually believe what they are saying.

God help us if they are genuine people who actually believe all this shit they’re saying. It’s frightening.

I wonder if mum got another doctors opinion from another hopsital then her view would change. Though from the court document it sounds like she has? But what mum says and what the court document says seem to go against each other.. know what narrative believe more...

No hospital is going to give another opinion. No one else will want to get involved.

To be honest don't blame them. The situation seems very clear. But think that's partly why the Army are like why they are. Mum will give her view which is different and suddenly the court documents are seen as 'forged'.

People asking why the hopsital want him dead and gone..they don't. Their thinking just seems bonkers.

If he's brain dead though ,it doesn't matter how many opnions she gets they are all going to say the same thing .

It's just not very intelligent people ,only listening to the mums side of it ,,they just can't grasp there is no coming back from this .

That's pretty appalling, given that Hollie previously went out of her way to say the nurses were brilliant. Has she responded to those accusations? I wonder how the army account for the nurses' sudden transmutation into lazy child killers? I must say, if nurses can't be bothered to look after patients I struggle to understand why they would opt to work in Intensive care, but no doubt the army has an explanation for that also.

The judgments indicate that the hospital itself got a number of second opinions, all of them agreeing that Archie was brain dead and that operating could not achieve anything. The parents through the idiot Christian Legal Centre got a report from an American doctor, Dr Shewmon, but he neither examined Archie nor even looked at his scans. It'll be interesting to see if he has looked at them by the time of the new hearing.

Assuming the decision goes against them, I think it's almost inevitable that they will seek leave to appeal - I can't see the Christian Legal Centre letting this one go. And they may well get it, in end of life cases the courts are understandably reluctant to prevent people from having their say no matter how hopeless it seems. So it could even go on to the Supreme Court and the ECHR.

Thats what thought..didnt realise there was another American doctor involved. Didnt that happen before with the Charlie case and again he hadn't been seem by them or realised how severe it was. Seems like false hope when there isnt one.

'Morning all . Not to much sleep as you can tell as last night I was rather anxious. Archies Sat's came up after the ventilator rate was altered and still in air no oxygen has ever been required on that . His Sat's are good but how he is still going is beyond me to be honest . He is one hell of a fighter. I'm riding this out whatever the outcome just like Archie is . The boy is a warrior 💜'

Archie's mum posted that this morning but I'm not really sure what it means? Has he had a troubled night?

I suspect the Christian Legal Centre are a bit frustrated by that decision. The extra grounds of appeal they put forward were all around the definition of brain stem death and tests for it, and I think they wanted to try to establish that basically brain stem death shouldn't be accepted as part of the definition of death. So they're probably a bit pissed off that the court swerved that.

What's the ultimate aim of the CLC?. They repeatedly use cases like this to try and get 'life at all costs into law. Thankfully they haven't succeeded yet, but what are they trying to achieve. There must be a long game. They actively look for these cases and then offer free legal advice, as long as the parents do it on grounds that their religious beliefs are the reason they won't withdraw.
If they get a life at all costs judgment into law, what other laws would this affect?
Is this a step towards anti-abortion laws? I just wonder what they are trying to do, because anyone with half a brain can see these cases are pretty much unwinnable,
In this country, we have the children's act that gives children their own rights in law, and puts the child's best interest above the parent's wishes,do they want to fundamentally change that?

I'm sure that one of their goals is to restrict or even abolish the right to abortion. A lot of their cases are also around Christian rights generally, including the right to be homophobic and anti-islamic. Certainly in the Evans and Gard cases they strongly supported the argument that parents' wishes for their children should always come first and that courts should never have a right to override that. You have to wonder how that argument works in the case of abusive parents.

I agree with this. I know I was disparaging last week about the appeal but having read the judgment I think this whole issue has been swerved on purpose.

“Best interests” enables the argument that Archie, with his dead, rotting brain, and myriad other issues (because he’s dead) should just be let go. No one would want this for themselves and it’s undignified. It bases it on clinical prognosis (which is terrible, as he’s dead) rather than clinical diagnosis (dead). It enables all of the dire medical information to guide the decision.

It also shuts down the stated aim of the Christian Legal team who were trying to “redefine the meaning of death”. I agree abortion was probably one of their end goals. I can’t see how Archie remaining on a ventilator until his body rots and heart stops helps them.

As an aside, the pictures Hollie posted the other day of his monitor showing sats, HR, BP etc was interesting but it took me a while to work out what was so clearly wrong about it.

A healthy child’s heart rate has a lot of beat-to-beat variability. The time between beats isn’t fixed, it changes with breathing but presumably also in response to other nervous system stimuli. A child’s ECG, if the machine is adult calibrated, will often come with the report of “sinus arrthymia” because of this. Archie’s heart beat tracing on the monitor looks like a metronome.