Court rules against parents’ plan to treat ill son

LONDON — Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled Monday against the parents of a terminally ill boy who want permission to take him to Italy for medical treatment that lower courts blocked in favor of suspending life support.

The parents of 23month-old Alfie Evans have been in a protracted legal fight with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. They asked the Court of Appeal to overturn earlier rulings that blocked further medical treatment for their son.

Instead, justices upheld a lower court’s conclusion that flying Alfie to a hospital in Rome would be wrong and pointless.

Some protesters gathered outside the hospital in Liverpool wept at the news of the decision.

Alfie is in a “semi-vegetative state” as the result of a degenerative neurological condition that doctors have been unable to definitively identify.