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Alfie’s Legacy
Alfie Evans graced this world less than twenty-four months. I say grace because during the months of his short, precious life, he silently spoke volumes from his fragile hospital bed, as though he had a megaphone.
Alfie Evans was born a healthy, happy baby to Tom Evans, 21 and Kate James, 20 of Liverpool, England. As an infant, Alfie received several vaccines all at once along with “other medications”, as was reported. He started showing symptoms of illness at about six months with seizures and then his brain began to deteriorate. Some have speculated that he had a reaction to the vaccines, but that has never been proven. The hospital in England could not make a diagnosis, and Alfie was eventually put on life support. When the hospital decided nothing more could be done, even though no diagnosis was ever found, they informed the parents he would be removed from life support. His young parents pleaded that life support continue, but they said no.
It was at that point that Bambino Gesu Catholic children’s hospital in Rome, Italy, just a few hundred yards from Vatican City, offered to take Alfie and continue to care for him. “Rome’s Vatican-owned pediatric hospital Bambino Gesù has offered to treat the 23-month-old boy, who has a serious undiagnosed brain condition. The government in Rome has granted Alfie Italian citizenship in a bid to bring him to Italy and beat rulings to let him die.”
I was struck by several profound events that occurred in the final days. First, why would the Italian hospital and doctors give hope to this young couple if there was no hope? They would not offer their services or hospital, with the Pope granting Italian citizenship to Alfie within days to cut through the red tape, unless there was something they had to offer, beyond the British hospital where Alfie lay. At the very least, they seemed to say they would continue to care for him until the parents decided that there was nothing more that could be done.
Second, there was an outcry from thousands in support of the rights of the parents over the hospital, who not only ignored the parents’ request to continue life support, but who wanted to go to Italy to try to save their little boy. I followed the almost daily emails from Dr. Robert Moynihan, who writes The Moynihan Letters and is Editor of ‘Inside the Vatican’ Magazine. I almost hesitated each morning, yet anticipated – hoped – for just a thimble of good news upon opening my email.
Alfie was expected to die within minutes of the removal of his life support. He lived for five days, and they pressed on during those days. They had to beg for water, then nourishment. Candlelight vigils began in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, rosaries prayed for Alfie. Dr. Moynihan said the following in one email:
“As the world’s eyes turn toward England, and the choice the English authorities will make in this case… …many are also turning inward, in prayer, to construct the ramparts of an impregnable interior castle… …an impregnable interior castle, against any world order or legal system which will diminish or deny the primary right of parents to care for their children……and, with the help of expert doctors, provide them the best possible, loving care, until they are called from this life by God, not man…
To this end, a rosary will be prayed tonight in St. Peter’s Square, as last night, and the night before, and will be prayed for another six days, making a nine-day novena.
The prayer, though obviously for young Alfie, is also for Asia Bibi, a 51-year-old Pakistani Christian who was wrongly sentenced to death by hanging for blasphemy in 2010, and has been in prison ever since while her sentence is appealed (link), and for all who suffer attacks against their human dignity and human rights. It is also for own interior conversion, that our actions may not fall short of the high ideal set for us in the Beatitudes, to support those who mourn, to be meek, to be peace-makers…” Dr. Robert Moynihan – The Moynihan Letters April 23, 2018
Moynihan continued via email April 26th:
“The prayer ended. The crowd began to disperse. I said to the Italian woman next to me: “Well, even from his hospital bed, Alfie is changing the world. Even if we can no longer talk about him, and he cannot speak, he’s doing it…” She looked at me quizzically. “We must stop what is happening all over the world, what they are doing to the children,” she replied, quite firmly, with a quite serious look, in a decisive voice…”
Third, I was struck by the movement to pray for our own condition and that of our neighbor, for those imprisoned for their beliefs, and for simply, freedom of the human spirit. This was bigger than Alfie. There was an acknowledgement that an S.O.S was needed from above, that our human condition was also on life support.
What are they doing to the children? What is secular society doing to the rights of families, religion, the fragile and frail among us? Who decides life and death?
Alfie brought people out to pray in the public square for their own interior conversion, for each other, for the world. A little angel barely 24 months of age, unable to speak, made life, holiness and hope a priority again. God bless you Alfie.
Published in General
The Evans family will forever remember their dear Alfie, and mourn his loss as long as they live. However, I am beginning to believe this may be a case of bad things happening to good people, where prayerful human response, can turn hearts to G-d and bring light to the world in the midst of tremendous loss.
Tragedy, illness and death break our hearts, but such events do have the potential to make a positive impact on the future; on people.
I think of this story and verses from Genesis:
#BlessAlfie
It must have been ten years ago that I said to a friend, “Our children may be the first modern martyrs for the faith.” I didn’t know what I was saying…
I am cautious, but not antagonistic, on vaccines.
Is there a reason why such tiny bodies need so much in such a short time? Especially if breastfed and/or not in day care?
What are the chances this had an effect on Alfie?
Front Seat, your lovely memorial to this child is marred by your salacious and unjustified insinuation that Alfie was poisoned by childhood vaccines. If you have some proof of this, I would appreciate your showing it.
AltarGirl, you can be cautious about vaccines if you are cautious about smallpox, rubella, measles, diphtheria, tetanus and hepatitis B.
I Googled a history of vaccines. Just maybe the today’s much longer list of vaccines is overkill. Me and a lot of later baby boomers survived this long with vaccines for just Smallpox, DTP, and Polio (IPV). Unless it’s call by another name, smallpox is not on today’s list. I had strep throat & bronchitis as a teenager and nothing worse than colds ever since. Because of that, it would be hard for me to see the need for most of today’s vaccines.
If Alfie did have a vaccine reaction, I would wager against it being disclosed, given the utter corruption of the bureaucratic nightmare they call the NHS. That said, there is not specific evidence for any particular cause of illness – whether idiosyncratic reaction, inborn error of metabolism, or exposure to an environmental toxin.
The US has a much more detailed vaccine adverse event reporting system, and the FDA is almost clinically paranoid about medications. I’d be much more comfortable endorsing your viewpoint with respect to a US hospital.
Why would you vaccinate for tetanus? It’s easy enough to get a shot if there’s an injury.
I was already at the doctor’s office.
So it might be that Alfie’s strange incurable illness was due to the overzealous vaccine regimen now being pushed by the powers that be. This is the first time I have read this side of the story. Who are the sources that suspect a vaccine reaction?
I am not a crazy anti-vaccine zealot, but you can put me in the cautious camp too. I got the boomer vaccines and I get a flu shot yearly. I found that taking the military’s international series as an adult made me pretty sick for a day or so but nothing I could identify as serious. But, I have personally witnessed too many post-vaccine problems in children, including my own, to totally swallow the happy talk or submit to the scare tactics. Docs, when its your own kids, you don’t use the word anecdotal! If a peanut allergy can cause a life-threatening reaction in a child, How can we believe that a vaccine or one of its components might not be deadly to some?
It would have been extremely embarrassing for the NHS if Italian doctors had cured Alfie, wouldn’t it? Can’t have that.
Put me down too as concerned about vaccines.
I’m not against them. I had all my children vaccinated.
But I’ve read enough to have worries, and I have a reaction whenever “the scientific community” seems to be campaigning to declare an issue closed for discussion, treating anyone with doubts or questions or evidence in support of another hypothesis as dangerous fanatics who have to be silenced and marginalized.
Articles like this one make sense to me.
I delayed my boys vaccinations by about two years from the recommended schedule until they were older and had more established immune systems. I also spread them out over several visits instead of the Dr’s preferred approach of several shots during a single visit.
Perhaps I invited more risk by delaying, but in our clearly non third world environment I thought it was a reasonable gamble since 20 years ago when they were infants this was a hotly contested “discussion”.
I was also observing my own father’s reaction to the annual flu shot which took two episodes to trace it to his eventual transition to type 2 diabetes. The first event “excited” his immune system to go after his own platelets. He was producing them, but his white blood cells were scooping them up. It took 6 months before he was back to normal from excessive bleeding from life’s little scrapes. The second time his immune system charged after his insulin cells. This time the effect was so pronounced that the doc’s were immediately able to trace it to his response to the flu shot. Since he was a federal employee and was getting the recommended regime from the on center clinic it was documented and sent to the CDC for consultation.
Seems the CDC is aware of these occasional “adverse reactions” to the annual crap shoot when they formulate what they think the bug of the year is going to be and do not “advertise” that the shots are anything but safe, because they don’t want anyone to not get the shots and diminish the herd immunity. That is a bigger priority than the statictical minority that has adverse reaction. So keep that in mind when you listen to the benevolence advice of your government bureaucrats.
In all fairness it is probably on the same order of risk of you dying in a commercial plane accident. The possibility of death is out there, and we would rather not think about it, but it is so very unlikely not worth driving instead, which has a higher chance of killing you. Life has it’s risks
Alfie spent 12 months in the hospital and from what I’ve read doctors were not sure what was wrong with Alfie. In other words his condition could not be diagnosed. Two different doctors apparently treated Alfie with different medications. That’s really all anyone knows outside the medical staff that were involved in Alfie’s treatment.
From what I’ve read from several different media outlets on the timeline of Alfie’s of being admitted to the hospital his parents were becoming frustrated with the length of time Alfie was in the hospital, and it appears that communication between his parents, and his doctors was becoming extremely contentious.
Vaccines are not mentioned in any of the articles I have read involving the treatment Alfie received.
There are certainly ethical concerns involved in Alfie’s story. It may be that we’ll never know what Alfie was suffering from, but I see no reason why an inquest should not take place that concerns both the medical issues, ethical issues, and the communication issues between his parents and doctors.
I see no reason why the hospital could not release Alfie so his parents could seek medical care outside the Britain. Whether or not that would be effective is a hypothetical question. His doctors had already stated that Alfie was not going to recover, but if that’s the case there would be no reason not to release him to another hospital.
I’m not sure if this part is true, but I read as part of this ongoing story, that according to British law, after the age of 2, parents can file a case if they believe their child’s illness could have been brought about by vaccine injections. He would have turned two within two weeks of the hospital’s decision to remove life support.
I don’t have any personal objection to vaccines. I received them as a baby also. This was part of the original story, that he received up to six vaccines or more all at once, along with other medications as a baby. He then began to experience seizures. I don’t know if it was related or not, but some do. I will add a line to the story that specifies that – you make a good point.
All three of my kids had reactions to vaccines, and one of those reactions was so severe that her pediatrician has declared that she can never have it again and has said as much in an official document stapled to my daughter’s birth certificate and passport. The pediatrician ran a blood test on my daughter to determine that she had adequate levels of the antibodies in the MMR vaccine as to not need the subsequent shots in the series.
Doctors used to tell parents (including me) to look for three reactions to vaccines that would indicate a bad reaction: a high fever that spikes dramatically, inconsolable crying, and crazy swelling at the injection site. My daughter’s injection site swelled up to the size of a golf ball within six hours of having had the vaccine.
I think the “anti-vaccine” people are getting a bad rap from the press. Most of these families are simply delaying these vaccines.
It is certainly within the realm of possibility that little Alfie had a bad reaction to a vaccine. If I had little kids today, I’d be in the delay-the-vaccine group, except for whooping cough. Of course, I had my kids at home, not in daycare, so I could make that choice, to wait until they were three or four years old.
There are many other possibilities as well. Ticks and mosquitoes have become global disease carriers now. There’s a doctor in North Carolina, Dr. Joseph Jemsek, who has accumulated some evidence that a cluster of mysterious central nervous system diseases such as MS being seen in modern hospitals could be diseases carried by these blood-sucking bugs. I saw a video several years ago that he made on this subject that was fascinating. His notion of where these diseases are coming from and how they are spreading was very interesting. I no longer have the video–it belonged to a friend of mine who was a Massachusetts state legislator.
In biological science, there are found anomalies to just about everything we think we know. We need to stop saying “It can’t be” and keep saying “Let’s look at this.”
Smallpox is not on the list because the vaccine made smallpox extinct. Gone Forever. Kaput.
As for the others, you and a lot of other baby boomers haven’t lived until you have cared for a baby who is deaf and blind from congenital rubella. I have.
I too am cautious about unanimous opinions in the powers that be, I too have avoided vaccines that did not pass the sniff test (swine flu in 1976) and I too have suffered a transient vaccine reaction and cared for a child, my child, similarly afflicted. But five minutes spent reading about diptheria and all the other goodly diseases I first listed will show the value of vaccines.
Reflex anti-vaccinationism gives libertarians and granola crunchers of all stripes a bad name. And it endangers individuals and society alike.
Read William Carlos Williams’ short story, “the use of force”. It’s about a young child soon to die of diphtheria. This is why we have vaccinations.
Dr Robert, the very first law of science relates to this one: Observation is the first step to scientific discovery.
Ten thousand people brought healthy children into the doctor’s office, had their children injected with the MMR vaccine and left with the two year olds screaming in agony, convulsing in the back seat of the car while a parent or friend held the child. Then over the following next 3 to 5 weeks, continuous convulsions, tremendous diarrhea and finally the descent into autism.
Those ten thousand people got together and signed a petition to bring the matter to the attention of then Pres Obama. The petition received a tiny bit of news media attention and then via Google’s love for the CDC, FDA and Big Pharma, was booted out of history.
BTW, Sen Burton of Indiana brought forth a panel to look into vaccines, due to his experiences with a grandchild and another congress woman’s experience with her child or grandchild. This was circa 1999-2000 and recorded on C Span. I’ll see if I can find the link to those 4 to 6 hours of scientific presentations. The time was spent with experts’ statements combined with statistics about how poorly our children fare health-wise, when compared with children in less vaccinated nations like Finland and France. As well as outstanding work of Dr Wakefield, who for pity’s sake, never once said parents shouldn’t vaccinate children. He simply showed his work on how he found measles viral material inside the intestinal tracts of the two years old that he had studied. His work has been peer reviewed many times across the world. Wakefield also stressed no one should give their child multiple vaccines in one day. (It’s basic common sense.)
Local educational district laws indicate no child can be turned away even if unable to focus on a teacher’s instructions or words, meaning a very expensive society as we go forward. As someone who helped friends’ deal with their badly impacted 26 year old son, whose emotional age was 4 and who couldn’t put on his own shoes and socks, it is no picnic. If he was upset over anything, including a minor thing like too little catsup on a hotdog, he might break a TV, a stereo or a bed. Luckily his parents were well to do, and it is possible in his case, it was heavy exposure to various chemicals in his environment rather than vaccines causing the condition. But one in 68 children having the condition is not something I can even contemplate as we go forward.
Sadly so many people who believe as you do blithely stating “Life has its risks” continue on with such beliefs until the moment of the day their child’s, or grandchild’s, brain swells up and kills said child after a hep vaccine booster shot. (Ask Michael Belkin about that – he went through the experience with his four month old dying in his arms while still at the doctor’s office.)
Currently the bigger problem is the autism rate. One out of 68 children is now a victim of autism. The rate used to be one in ten thousand but now it is sky rocketing. Meanwhile TV shows try to convince us that most of these cases are “merely asperger’s” syndrome, and that children with that condition can become residents at a hospital on their way to being doctors, except the reality is far different.
Herd immunity is a philosophical theorem set up to convince people that vaccines are the opposite of what they are. The very essential concept inherent to a vaccine being a vaccine is that when you have it – you don’t need to worry about others having it. That is why people traveling all around the world get vaccinated – and then do not think twice about whether or not the area they visit has people who are or aren’t vaccinated. Basically, herd theory is crap.
This could be a separate post – that is astounding! I wonder how many vaccines are given to children in total, if they space them out and how many are no longer needed because a disease is no longer a threat? @Dr.Robert?
I have my own theory about what may be causing the austism numbers to rise: Acetaminophen. It made an appearance on the market in the right time frame. Most obstetricians believed it to be safe–acetaminophen got quite a boost when it was suspected that Reyes’ syndrome was caused by aspirin given to children when they had a cold.
There’s a good reason I suspect acetominophen given during pregnancy.
I read a fantastic book a few years ago by the neuroscientist Matt Lieberman. The book is called Social. (By the way, a quarter of his book is about autism. It’s really interesting.)
Lieberman became famous for making the discovery, using functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) technology to establish that physical and emotional pain are processed in the same part of the brain. That is why he is so famous. He wrote in his book about the new discovery that acetaminophen had a quieting effect on emotional anxiety. He was ahead of his time in realizing the importance of that discovery–he may have been on the team that discovered it. I can’t remember.
At any rate, knowing what I know about the nervous system and autism, it would a lot of sense that autism is being caused by in utero acetaminophen. And there could actually be a two-factor issue here. It could be a combination of factors: the right genetic makeup plus acetaminophen.
What is interesting to me is that the timing in terms of age would point to the more immediate thing, the vaccines, which may be obscuring the real problem, which might be acetaminophen. Autism may be a brain and central nervous system development issue.
I’m not saying any of this is true, just that I am really curious about it.
Nobody here has said they were anti-vax.
We said *cautious*.
Just because I don’t think my child should get 4 vaccinations in one visit at 3 months old doesn’t mean they aren’t vaccinated.
For my first, I limited each visit to 2 vaccinations. If there were more, I came back 2 weeks later.
My last had issues early on which threw his schedule way off. He’ll be up to date this month (after his 3rd birthday).
Your reflexive condemnation of caution when it comes to our children is unwarranted.
From 21: “This could be a separate post – that is astounding! I wonder how many vaccines are given to children in total, if they space them out and how many are no longer needed because a disease is no longer a threat? @Dr.Robert?”
It is indeed astounding, and it is something that the pediatric and internal medicine professional organizations and the CDC spend a lot of trouble on. I think there is a lot of room for wiggling, for example I agree that it makes sense to space vaccines out so that one can observe and know what happened and, if something goes wrong, what was at fault. I did this with my children, one shot at a time. Their pediatrician, a devout Christian and political conservative, was very open to negotiation on this, but not on the need to eventually protect the kids with the vaccines.
Here is a link to the current AAP recommendations. You will see that they have a LOT of flexibility.
https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/immunizations/Pages/Immunization-Schedule.aspx
Regarding #23, I am not condemning caution. I am condemning ignorance and false assumptions. Caution is good in medicine. I’m cautious. In my 30-40s I avoided flu shots. And I usually had the flu each winter. Now I’m elderly, a cancer survivor, exposed at work to many sick people, so I know that my risks of the flu are greater than yours. Since my first cancer I have always taken my flu shots. And while flu shots are prospective, that is to say are built against the expected strains and not necessarily against the strains that actually appear, they work well for me. I don’t get the flu any more. Go figure.
After my last post I looked up diptheria at the CDC. In the single year 1920 we had 15,000 American deaths from 200,000 cases. In the ten years 2007-17, with three times the population, there were FOUR CASES in all of the USA.
This makes my point. The use of vaccines is, with indoor toilets and clean municipal water supplies, one of the three or four most important public health advances in human history.
So the gratuitous assignment of a poor little boy’s terminal mitochondrial disease to his vaccines, or comments that “well, I did ok without all those vaccines”, or the absurd and clearly disproven “link” of autism to childhood vaccines, really frost me. What especially frosts me is the barely-hidden strain of thinking “I’m smarter than all those Docs” among people who know nothing of the subject.
And you know, come to think of it, my four grandparents all did OK without flu vaccines too, but the 30,000,000 people who died of Spanish flu in 1918 did not.
https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/
I’m sorry. There’s no one I have more respect for than the doctors who have saved the lives of my family members, friends, and actually me a couple of times. :-)
For reference: I get flu shots & boosters like TDAP regularly. Any time you or your child gets a vaccination, ask for the vaccine information sheet. It has information on the vaccine and a number to call to report adverse reactions.
If you want to speculate on causes for autism, you need to present a reasonable mechanism and some animal or cell data. You also need to consider the increase in diagnosis via less stigma & better screening.
By the way, Aluminum is used Maalox and cookware.
Getting back to Alfie, may I share this story from another Ricochet post:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/open-letter-uk-bishops-handling-of-alfie-evans-case-was-an-abject-failure
Wakefield actually did as you suggest in paragraph two of yr post. He utilized results based on findings of the material discovered inside the intestines of over 30 children who had been vaxxed with the MMR.
His observation that live measles viral material is imparted into the walls of the intestines offered one indication why so many parents experienced their kids dealing with weeks of on going diarrhea. In a decent society, where profit doesn’t try to destroy research, his small would have resulted in someone inside Big Pharma undertaking the same research, only on a bigger scale, since they are the ones who can afford large scale. But nah, his study suggesting the indications of the mechanism of how possibly the MMR ends up creating autistic children was shit canned.
A friend of mine was saying she has never seen the type of witch hunt against any individual as what the American public has witnessed with DOJ and FBI going after Trump. And then she said, “Oh wait – I am forgetting about what they did to Wakefield.” He was a successful gastroenterologist before a handful of parents implored him to conduct research. The theory behind his research is touted by so many in the health community, including gastroenterologists. That theory is that healthy bacteria, flora, is important to have proper nutrition, and that there is a connection between all the systems involved in food digestion and proper brain functioning.
Also the story reflected the hospital’s refusal to 1. keep Alfie on life support, 2. transfer him to the hospital in Italy where all preparations were done and 3. finally, when the parents wanted to bring him home when 1 and 2 were refused, they were also denied. The biggest outrage seemed to be the loss of control that parents had over their child – and at what point does full socialized medicine take control of such decisions? Are we headed there?