Mind you, the pediatricians of Bambino Gesù in Rome have been professional and diplomatic. They point no fingers at Alder Hey. They merely offered to take the child and treat him after the Liverpool doctors had indicated their intent to remove life support. Alfie’s parents wanted to place him in the care of the Italian hospital. Alder Hey said no and refused to release him. The courts ruled in favor of Alder Hey and against the parents.
“Sometimes, the sad fact is that parents do not know what is best for their child,” Dominic Wilkinson, an Oxford neonatologist, tells CNN, defending the courts and Liverpool doctors while diverting attention from the immediate question that the present controversy raises: Confronted with divergent expert medical opinions, does not the patient or, as in this case, his proxy have the right to decide between them?
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