Content warning: suicide, child loss, death
What does everyone think of this tragic case.
Basically 12 year old Archie is braindead, and his body is being kept alive by a ventilator. He has zero hope of recovery or survival.
He was an accomplished gymnast and boxer, and suffered from ADHD, missing years of school because none would accept him.
On the 7th of April he was found hanging over the stairs from his landing bannisters with a dressing gown cord around his neck. His mother insists that it was a Tiktok blackout prank gone wrong, or an accident, but it seems obvious that it was suicide. She is very shifty about what happened immediately before this incident. Something about Archie putting his pet rabbit in a shower bag as a “prank”. I speculate that he got a big telling off for this and she feels guilty and is in denial.
Archie was not found for 10 minutes, and overall his brain is thought to have lacked oxygen for 40 minutes.
His family are fighting to keep him on the ventilator, and to avoid having him declared dead. They have lost their case at the High Court, and the judge ruled that Archie had officially died and the hospital were permitted to withdraw treatment. The family will appeal on Monday, and if they lose that their final option is the Supreme Court.
The issue is that under UK law, if the brainstem is dead, a person is legally dead. In order to be declared brainstem dead, a 7 step test must be carried out. This test was unable to be administered to Archie, because the peripheral nerve part of the test didn’t work at all. (I suspect this is because of the spinal cord decomposition). He is the only person to have been legally declared brainstem dead without the tests being carried out. The judge made this decision based on MRI scans showing the terrible state of Archie’s brain.
Their legal fees are being paid for by Christian Concern. The family have become Christian since the tragedy and have had them all, including Archie, baptised.
At first the mother was in complete denial of the hopelessness of Archie’s condition, and was begging for him to have the time to heal so he could come home. Gradually the family have changed their hopes and now say they accept that he will die, but the want it to happen “naturally” rather than having the plug pulled.
The mother in general has strong denial, including claiming the MRI showing the catastrophic brain damage was not Archie’s scan. She is very suspicious of the doctors and nurses and makes a lot of accusations towards them. Most notably that they are starving Archie. The issue is that when they give him feed, he gets diarrhoea and loses more fluid than they put in. He is losing a lot of fluid due to high urine output and the diarrhoea, issues both caused by the brain damage (his kidneys and bowels are not receiving the correct signals). So they have to limit his feed and he is visibly starving. But this is not deliberate.
Archie’s uncontrollable fluid output is putting a strain on his heart and he may not last long even on a ventilator.
For me the ethical dilemma is that should hospitals have a rights to choose when to kill someone? But also if Archie is left with his brain dead and body alive, will that stop his spirit moving on to Heaven or being reborn?
It’s a very sad case anyway, and I hope the mum doesn’t blame herself for his (probable) suicide.
What does everyone think of this tragic case.
Basically 12 year old Archie is braindead, and his body is being kept alive by a ventilator. He has zero hope of recovery or survival.
He was an accomplished gymnast and boxer, and suffered from ADHD, missing years of school because none would accept him.
On the 7th of April he was found hanging over the stairs from his landing bannisters with a dressing gown cord around his neck. His mother insists that it was a Tiktok blackout prank gone wrong, or an accident, but it seems obvious that it was suicide. She is very shifty about what happened immediately before this incident. Something about Archie putting his pet rabbit in a shower bag as a “prank”. I speculate that he got a big telling off for this and she feels guilty and is in denial.
Archie was not found for 10 minutes, and overall his brain is thought to have lacked oxygen for 40 minutes.
His family are fighting to keep him on the ventilator, and to avoid having him declared dead. They have lost their case at the High Court, and the judge ruled that Archie had officially died and the hospital were permitted to withdraw treatment. The family will appeal on Monday, and if they lose that their final option is the Supreme Court.
The issue is that under UK law, if the brainstem is dead, a person is legally dead. In order to be declared brainstem dead, a 7 step test must be carried out. This test was unable to be administered to Archie, because the peripheral nerve part of the test didn’t work at all. (I suspect this is because of the spinal cord decomposition). He is the only person to have been legally declared brainstem dead without the tests being carried out. The judge made this decision based on MRI scans showing the terrible state of Archie’s brain.
The brainstem has been pushed down into the spinal cord by the brain swelling. The brainstem is 50% damaged and 10-20% necrotic. The brain has no blood flow, is swollen and cone-shaped, has areas of fluid build up from the liquid released by dead brain cells, and there is zero brain activity at all, as seen on his last electroencephalogram. The spinal cord also has two areas of necrosis, and necrotic tissue (possibly from Archies brain) has fallen out and is sitting in the lumbar spinal cord.
Their legal fees are being paid for by Christian Concern. The family have become Christian since the tragedy and have had them all, including Archie, baptised.
At first the mother was in complete denial of the hopelessness of Archie’s condition, and was begging for him to have the time to heal so he could come home. Gradually the family have changed their hopes and now say they accept that he will die, but the want it to happen “naturally” rather than having the plug pulled.
The mother in general has strong denial, including claiming the MRI showing the catastrophic brain damage was not Archie’s scan. She is very suspicious of the doctors and nurses and makes a lot of accusations towards them. Most notably that they are starving Archie. The issue is that when they give him feed, he gets diarrhoea and loses more fluid than they put in. He is losing a lot of fluid due to high urine output and the diarrhoea, issues both caused by the brain damage (his kidneys and bowels are not receiving the correct signals). So they have to limit his feed and he is visibly starving. But this is not deliberate.
Archie’s uncontrollable fluid output is putting a strain on his heart and he may not last long even on a ventilator.
For me the ethical dilemma is that should hospitals have a rights to choose when to kill someone? But also if Archie is left with his brain dead and body alive, will that stop his spirit moving on to Heaven or being reborn?
It’s a very sad case anyway, and I hope the mum doesn’t blame herself for his (probable) suicide.
