It Ends Nearly Four Months Of Suffering For The Kid Who Was Found Unconscious By His Parents In April

The parents of 12 year old Archie Battersbee have announced their son's life support was terminated on Saturday the 6th of August, nearly four months to the day they'd discovered their son unresponsive in their Essex home.

The family of the 12 year old spent three months fighting doctors and the NHS in courts ranging from the UK Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights, trying to give their son more time to recover.

The courts both here and on the continent agreed with NHS doctors, that Archie Battersbee had been brainstem dead since May and continuing treatment wouldn't be in the boy's best interest. 

Archie's parents have taken to suing the government for letting their son die in hospital, claiming the NHS violated Charlie's Law.

Charlie's Law was established in 2017 to protect the rights of brain dead patients, after public court battles between the parents of 11 month old Charlie Gard and the NHS resulted in the termination of Charlie's life support.

They've issued a statement reading: "We've been forced to fight a relentless legal battle by the NHS, whilst facing an unimaginable tragedy. 

We were backed into a corner by the health system, stripped of our rights, and had to fight for Archie's real best interests.

This has happened too often to parents who don't want their brain dead children to have their life support removed, no parent or family must go through this again".

Archie's Parents fear that their failure to overturn the decision to terminate his life support, would set the stage for more parents loosing their loved ones unjustly in hospital.

Cardiff University's professor of palliative medicine Baroness Ilora Finlay commented that: "The problem of the adversarial system once it get's to court is it takes everybody's time away, from the family being at the bedside of the person dying and the doctors trying to act in their patient's best interest".

We will never know if Archie wanted to be saved or let the pain of it all end, which is the most tragic part of the 12 year old's passing.