The UK Supreme Court has rejected a request by Archie Battersbee’s parents to transfer the brain-dead 12-year-old to a hospice unit. The judge in the case considered that Archie “should remain in the hospital”: “I hope that now Archie can have the opportunity to die in peaceful circumstances, with the family that has meant as much to him as clearly he is to them.” The family will appeal to the Court of Appeal.

Archie is dead, biologically and legally. How would such a case be handled (by parents, doctors and justice) in Portugal?

The court’s decision is in line with the clinical opinion of doctors following the case of Archie Battersbee, who suffered brain death after being deprived of oxygen in a challenge he accepted on Tik Tok. The doctors believe that moving to a palliative care unit “would likely accelerate the premature deterioration that the family wants to avoid, even with the full intensive care team and the team on the trip.”

The parents, on the other hand, argued for the transfer so that Archie Battersbee could die “with dignity”, a dignity they felt did not exist at the Royal London Hospital due to “noise and lack of privacy”. “We don’t even get a chance to be in a room together as a family, without nurses,” mother Hollie Dance said in an interview with Times Radio on Thursday.

For this reason, a family spokesman has already said that Archie’s parents have appealed the Supreme Court’s decision to the Court of Appeal, to be heard this Friday, according to The Telegraph.

The family’s legal fight to keep Archie connected to the machines

Archie Battersbee, a 12-year-old English boy, has been officially brain dead since May 31, but has not regained consciousness since the April 7 incident. The mother assures that her son shook her hand, that she saw him try to breathe voluntarily and that he will have gained 400 grams during these months, but the doctors who treat him consider that he is brain dead, with irrecoverable injuries.

Archie, the brain-dead boy whose parents don’t want his heart to go out

Parents want the machines that keep the heart beating and the lungs filling and emptying to stay on, but doctors believe that prolonging the end of life is not in the child’s best interest. Two judges of the Supreme Court of England that assessed the case at separate times considered that the doctors could disconnect the machines and the judges of the Court of Appeal ended up considering this decision valid, denying the country the possibility of requesting a second appeal, as announced in this Monday.

The family was not satisfied with the decision and requested a stay of execution while they appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. The Court of Appeal granted a two-day stay to lodge the appeal with the European Court, which in the meantime refused to rule on the matter. The family has returned to the UK Supreme Court, which on Friday announced the decision to reject an order to transfer Archie to a hospice unit.