Non-fiction | Science and Bioethics

Alfie's death and our conscience
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AN OPINION
Of David Nieri
Alfie's death and our conscience
Source: Franco Cardini
In the end he didn't make it, poor Alfie. He passed away on Saturday night 28 April, a few days before his second birthday. Personally, I hoped for it until the end. I hoped the little one would continue to breathe, therefore to live, after the life support “plug” had been pulled a few days earlier. I hoped that at least the European Court would rule in favor of the transfer to "Bambino Gesù", after the Italian government had granted Alfie Italian citizenship to allow him to expatriate. Finally, I hoped for a miracle – we Catholics, you know, we believe - that it would annihilate judges and scientists from across the Channel who intend to rule on "life worth living" by establishing the boundary as a question of right, perhaps even going against the wishes of the parents - for a child under two years old, the only one possible. But in the land of Albion – that of the god of the English in whom you should never believe, and in fact I don't believe it – that's how it works: if there is no agreement between doctors and family, the law provides for the intervention of a judge. In the case in question, the doctors at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool had already declared, last December, that they have exhausted all options available to save the little one, therefore deciding to suspend the artificial ventilation that was keeping him alive. Decision to which obviously Tom and Kate Evans, the two very young parents, they were opposed, indicating among the treatment possibilities also the transfer to the "Bambino Gesù". None of this happened. As in the sad case of Charlie Gard, the end of a child's life has been decreed by law, and repeated appeals - including from the Holy See - to try to save the child were of no avail. Read More

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Actuality | Science and Bioethics

Brain death is a trick of the culture of death
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Reporting of BastaBugie editorial team

The brain death criterion was invented fifty years ago (1968) from Harvard University as an excuse to justify the first vital organ transplants
Of Alfredo de Matteo

(AUTOMATIC READING – with a human voice)
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary (1968) of the first definition of the brain death criterion, by a medical commission created ad hoc by Harvard University to ethically justify the first vital organ transplants. On the Future of 4 An interesting interview came out in February, the signature of Lucia Bellaspiga, to the researcher at the Neurolesi Center of Messina, Silvia Marino.
The occasion is an international meeting that took place in Milan on 2 last February on disorders of conscience, organized by the Irccs Carlo Besta Neurological Institute Foundation.
The neurologist Marino has been working for several years on probing the most hidden residues of consciousness through neuroimaging techniques and studying the reactions of the brain stimulated by sounds., smells and images. To patients apparently deprived of contact with the outside world and immobile for months or years in their bed, the researcher explains in the interview, we administer stimuli of all kinds, above all thanks to the fundamental collaboration of family members. While this is happening, through functional magnetic resonance imaging we can see if the areas of the patient's brain are activated.
So we studied 27 people diagnosed with minimal consciousness e 23 in a vegetative state, and among the latter well 10 they have transitioned to a state of minimal consciousness. Therefore, reiterates the neurologist, the word irreversible applied to disorders of consciousness, including vegetative state, it is no longer usable. Read More

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