Alfie parents’ anguish as judges reject latest plea to keep him alive
Announcing the judges’ decision, Lady Justice King said the couple were “unable to accept what movements in Alfie they see are not positive responses”.
She said medical evidence showed Alfie was deeply comatose and to all intents and purposes unaware of his surroundings.
She added: “I think, in fairness to the parents waiting anxiously on the other end of the telephone line, I should tell them immediately their applications for permission to appeal are refused.”
Lady Justice King said Alfie’s father, 21, was passionate and wanted to fight on with Alfie’s Army but had “no clear plan”.
She said Mr Justice Hayden, who oversaw proceedings in the Family Division of the High Court, could not have done more to ensure the parents had every opportunity to express their views. But the best interests of the child had to prevail.
Barrister Stephen Knafler QC, who is leading the parents’ legal team, said the state had wrongly interfered with parental choice.
But doctors say much of Alfie’s brain has been irreversibly destroyed and that continuing to treat him is unfair and inhumane. Last week another judge, Lord Justice McCombe, said: “It is very hard, impossible, to contemplate what could possibly be done to turn around the situation. “The moment has gone.” Mr Evans, of Bootle, Merseyside, has previously vowed not to give up. Speaking outside the High Court last month, he said Alfie had been sentenced to a death penalty.
Meanwhile European judges in Strasbourg dismissed an appeal by the parents of severely disabled one-year-old Isaiah Haastrup, who has been at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute in London.