RECAP OF ANTI-VAXERS USING ALFIE EVANS AS THEIR LATEST POSTER CHILD

By Erin K Costello

This is not going to be a post against the Evans, about any of the choices or actions they made, or about what anyone should or shouldn’t have done. This post is addressing the AV (anti-vaccine) community, their claims, their behavior, and their misinformation only. I will end up using quotes from Alfie’s father, Thomas Evans, throughout the blog post, but only to provide a timeline and to establish the inaccuracy of the AV community’s assertions. I will not address the politics of this ordeal, the morality of continuing or discontinuing life support, or State involvement in such matters. These are all subject matters beyond our website’s scope. 
  I knew very little about Alfie Evans before last week. I had a crash course in the life of this unfortunate child the past few days. While learning about Alfie’s ordeal I experienced something I thought had been an impossibility for some time; I experienced shock and horror while reading posts and comments from the AV Facebook community.

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 I had taken screen shots of bomb threats against Alder Hey Children’s hospital, screen shots of arson threats, and threats against the hospital staff.  I also seen many posts urging for others to harass the entire hospital by flooding the hospital with phone calls, with Facebook posts, and by protesting. What upset me the most however were the intentional and outrageous claims and lies made by so many people who knew nothing about this situation, nothing about medicine, and nothing about this family. Below is an example of what I’m referring to, and a very tame one at that. 
* "Organ harvesting and testing. Only reason that makes sense. They got what they wanted.”
  - "Yup. That, and the parent’s can’t sue for vaccine injury if he passed     before 2. He would’ve turned 2 in less than 2 weeks.”
    - "You see the pics when he looks healthy and thriving, and then bam all the sudden? Very odd, another cover up, another child suffered and it’s not gonna b reported just like cdc wants and the government and every one else that benefits from it wants it to be, pushed along like it’s just another natural cause type thing……..Bull**** heart breaking and scary people really need to open there eyes.”
     - “Cover up”
    - "I don’t think so but I read somewhere another person said alder hey forged their fathers signature and they harvested his sister’s organs.”
    - "Yes because they have control. That’s why parents had none. Alfie was the ward of the state. Alder hey had been involved in a scandal of harvesting 850 organs without parental consent. Obviously that’s not a deterrent for them.”
     - “I heard it was written into the plan as well”
* "I would like to know if it was a vaccine injury because it sure seemed like it”
     - "His dad said he was aware that could be possible.”
* "There’s not much of a doubt in my mind this started from vaccines. After watching their home videos and seeing pictures, he was a healthy baby. He started having seizures not long after his round of shots 6 months, his dad commented somewhere he had 5-6 shots [emoji] that’s what got him in the hospital, and there he stayed [emoji] its all heartbreaking”
     - "Between the convention of child rights, which usurps parental rights, and socialized medicine, the child belongs to the state and parents have no say. It happens in the UK all the time.. we only hear about it now because of social media.”
    - “I hope Alfie’s story opens some more eyes Alfie’s story can help n a positive way such a negative, sad situation can make a massive change, if people start Wondering what’s going on and how did a hospital get to decide if the parents can leave with him to go to another hospital and y that hospital didn’t want  him to go some where else something very suspicious I know this wasn’t in the U.S I still have alot to learn myself. but in U.S you have the right to discharge yourself/ and ur child, but you will deal with CPS for sure witch may cause a case to be opened and possibly ur child taken. Even it it’s to go to another hospital if they are offended it will happen. Stand ur ground and give them no reason to b there. Any way it’s already bad and scary…”
     - "so true, and the uk courts gag first before proceedings start as well”
* “In two weeks he would have turned two and you can’t file a claim for vaccine injury before a child is two years old in the UK, so they don’t have to pay for all those killed by their vaccine injuries before that age… Very clever to hide all those babies’ deaths from vaccines…”
     - “You can’t file any medical neglect cases before 2nd birthday in uj”
* "If you all are so desperate to find out look at the court records where all the doctors, even the Italian and German, agreed with AH! They only disagreed in the allowing a hospital to saying the child must die! The Italian doctors even said there is no benefit to additional testing. Let him RIP! This child could have easily been born with a defect missed at birth! The  mother, who was 18, noted that from the day she brought him home she noticed that things were not right! People are confused about what Tom and Kate have been fighting for. Not treatment or diagnosis but parental rights!”
* “Western medicine is not curing people-its 100% business and i’ m sure alfie would have beat the seizures with cannabis and would be in his mums arms. Medicine killed him like many others”

I’ll begin with the harvesting of organs concerning Alder Hey Hospital, and their history regarding these organ stealing claims. Up until Former Health Secretary Frank Dobson launched an inquiry In October 1999  the NHS had been making decisions regarding organ and tissue removal post mortem based on the Human Tissue Act of 1961. The HTA had only one requirement of clinicians in regards to removing organs from the bodies of loved ones. The requirement was vaguely written to say the clinician can take it upon themselves to remove such organ and/or tissue if they see no reason as to why the parents would object. That’s it. This law allowed hospitals and physicians to remove and keep any part of the body they believed to be beneficial for research or autopsy based on how they felt the family might feel about it. It was a “doctor knows best” kind of law, which was a common attitude back in the 1960’s. The inquiry found fault with clinicians for not making more of an attempt to learn how loved ones would feel about the removal of organs or tissue, however it did not find that clinicians purposely went out of their way to avoid such discovery either. The inquiry, which was led by chief medical examiner Liam Donaldson found that 105,000 organs are stored at hospitals and medical schools across England, specifically 2,080 organs were removed from 800 children at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s hospital. As a result of this scandal breaking that first concerned Bristol Royal Infirmary, and then Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, and as a result of the information learned during the inquiry, new laws and regulations were enacted to prevent this from happening again in the future. There is more to this scandal and story than I am not including in this post. I am not trying to downplay it any way and I encourage everyone to visit the links provided to learn about what happened in more depth. What happened was upsetting on many levels, however it was concluded the clinicians weren’t breaking any rules or laws. I find this an important point to make concerning these claims and stories being spread from the AV community about Alder Hey hospital and what happened to baby Alfie.

  Now let’s move on to “cover up.” This claim has been mentioned on every thread devoted to Alfie Evans. There are numerous reasons given for said cover up; the hospital’s pride, to hide a misdiagnosis, hide the harm of vaccines, harvest of organs from live babies to donate to sick babies, medical research, etc…. Every claim has zero proof naturally since AVers seem to be allergic to providing any form of evidence. Also, Alfie had been in the hospital since December of 2016. That would mean an entire hospital staff, the medical professionals who read in to Alfie’s case from around the world, and the media were in on this cover up for 16 months, and pulled it off right in front of his family and the public. They also would’ve had to been successful in hiding this cover up from the courts. This possibility in not only implausible, it’s almost impossible.

  In regards to the posts stating a Vaccine Damage Payment claim can not be filed on behalf of a child under 2, and the child must be alive or have lived until 2 years of age, I can’t find much information about this.  I can confirm this to be true,  however I can’t find much information on why this is a requirement. The best I can do is offer up a somewhat informed guess as to why this rule is in place.  It is specifically stated how any payments awarded through the Vaccine Damage Payment act are NOT compensations, but are solely “ease of living” type payments given to those who can prove 60% or more disability. Payments awarded are due to a disability claim basically. Also, you have to prove the existence of this disability, and the extent of limitations it creates for a person. I would imaging proving this, one way or another, on a child under 2 years of age would be quite difficult. Again I’d like to remind you how I have not read this to be the reasons behind this requirement, I’ve only concluded this to be a possibility based on the information I did read about the Vaccine Damage Payment act.

  Now, the most popular lie being insisted on in the AV community is how vaccines are to blame, they caused Alfie’s illness, or are somehow the evil force behind this tragedy. So many members of these Facebook groups are insisting Alfie wasn’t showing symptoms until after his 6 month shots. There are a couple of problems with this claim. The first being the UK doesn’t follow the same vaccine schedule as the US does. Our CDC recommendations aren’t followed by England. Six month olds don’t have scheduled vaccinations. There are some vaccines at 8, 12, and 16 weeks of age, but after that the next ones are recommended at 1 year of age. Alfie was born on May 9, 2016. Going by Thomas Evans’ own account of his son’s illness, this is not claimed to be caused by vaccines, and can’t even be argued to have been the cause. He states in a Facebook post to the page Alfie’s Official Army on June 22 2017 that Alfie was born on time, and three days later he was discharged from the hospital. He then states how they soon noticed something was wrong with Alfie, “He grew and fed well, but didn’t meet milestones. Alfie was a very sleepy baby who loved his sleep when he was awake he was an agitated baby. He favorite word was “ay” and he would shout that when he was irritated, so we smoother with love and comfort, and did what every other parent would do when a baby gets upset in a certain way. After a couple of weeks we noticed he wasn’t doing things he should e.g lifting his head up, looking at us for more than 20 seconds, grabbing his dummy, eating his hands, making gaga noises, etc. We also noticed he was doing a jerking movement with his hands, arms and legs and eyes would roll up.” He continues to state how after some months Alfie then began to go backwards in development, and that’s when Alfie developed a chest infection and was admitted to the hospital. This was in December of 2016. On Alfie’s first night he began having seizures all day long, and some lasting up to an hour. Thomas Evans even states how up until the date of this June 22, 2017 Facebook post Alfie had been taken off of life support three times and “shown he can manage a maximum of 13 days without the ventilator.” I have found no post by Thomas Evans stating how it’s a possibility this was caused by vaccines. That’s not to say that one doesn’t exist or that he hasn’t said this, but only to say that I’ve yet to find any proof of this. 
  It’s true that Alfie didn’t received a diagnosis during all this time. However, there were statements made to the media that medical professionals had a likely cause of Alfie’s illness established; a suspected undiagnosed neuro-degenerative disorder, possibly a mitochondrial disorder. 

   As for the comments regarding how things like this happen with socialist health care, or that the State owns your kids and parents have no rights because of socialist health care programs, I don’t want to comment on these remarks too deeply since this is mostly a political statement. I will say that AVers are often accusing local governments in the U.S of “medical kidnap” and/or infringing on parental rights. If that is the case then they must believe we already have socialist health care here in the U.S, or they’re mostly full of shit.

   I’ve saved this next section for last on purpose. The repeated asking of “why not just let the parents seek treatment elsewhere” is probably the most misunderstood part of this entire tragedy. It is showing to be the most lied about detail, and the catalyst behind the conspiracy theories they’ve pushed forward. I didn’t fully grasp it myself until researching for this  blog post. When first learning the details of Alfie’s ordeal a week ago, like many others I wondered what the big deal was in letting him go to Italy or anywhere else for health care. As the days went on and I learned more of this situation I began to understand how Alfie was likely suffering, and with no hope of improving it could be cruel to force him to continue his turmoil, yet I still thought the hospital should let him go. I’ll be honest, a part of me believed he should’ve been allowed to travel to Italy until about 10 hours ago when I began researching for this blog post. It was after reading post after post updating people about Alfie’s condition for the majority of the past year that I finally understood why the hospital fought against this on Alfie’s behalf.   These posts also show evidence on how the AV community is just plain wrong, selfish, and opportunistic when it comes to their agenda. I have seen several timelines of Alfie’s short life reported in the press regarding this whole situation, start to finish. I didn’t want to simply give an order of events though.  I wanted to cover this timeline as seen and lived through Alfie’s parents, and in their own words. They were the ones with Alfie every day, taking videos and pictures, involved with his health care, the hospital, the doctors, and the courts. They were the ones living through this hell. And even though I can’t imagine how horrible life is for them both at this moment, it was reading Thomas Evans’ posts that showed me why Alfie should not have been allowed to travel to another hospital and face continued care. Below are the posts that stood out to me the most. Please keep in mind that during this whole time Alfie also dealt with daily seizures, was in a constant coma, and no new information had been discovered. So for the days in between the following posts, at the very least Alfie was still experiencing serious health issues, seizures, life support, and was deteriorating. All these posts came from the Facebook page Alfie’s Army Official .  I searched through all of Thomas Evans’ posts from the beginning of the page in June 2017 until today, April 28, 2018. They are listed in this such order as well.
   

• On a June 23 2017 post by his father he updates Alfie’s supporters by explaining Alfie now has RSV and a urine infection. 
• On July 9 2017 Thomas Evans updates that Alfie is having more seizures and has a UTI with over 1,000 white cells. 
• On an August 2 2017 post his father mentions, “The Dr’s don’t think they will get to the bottom of this mystery illness hence why they may take us court but my goal is to get him out of here before hand. His dr is willing to lease and contract any dr who can help diagnose or treat Alfie he will consider it.” He then says in the same post, “Our goal at the moment is to reach out to as many neuro/epilepsey experts as we can we have been in touch with John Hopkins Boston nicklaus nih Joe dimaggio children’s store of Houston a hospital in Texas and florida we have hospitals viewing Alfie’s files and are just awaiting response we have had a response from Ireland who a Dr thinks he can treat I will be writing all these Dr’s down with there contact numbers and details for a dr spiny to call and see if they can help snd if he believes they will benefit Alfie.” 
• On an August 4 2017 post Thomas explains a meeting he had just had with hospital officials. He mentions the following, “Also, the main highlight of the meeting was that they are continuing to work with us and if we do find a Dr he is willing to speak with them and if he believes they have a treatment or or a trial or test to do they will work with them.” Thomas then continues, “Our relationship remains good with his Dr’s and they are willing to talk to other Dr’s please people will people not slag or judge alder hey as we have a very good relationship with them.” This meeting was also when the suggestion of this being a mitochondrial disorder first gets mentioned since “he has 2 variants in his mitochondrial results but they can’t diagnose!!!” Thomas states. 
• August 16 Thomas then posts, “Alfie ina deep sleep happy dreams:) Alfie isn’t doing to well, he has had his vent put right back up an ia no longer putting breaths in [emoji] this is devestating for us and we honestly believed he could come of again.” 
• August 21 2017 update from dad states Alfie is not doing well. “his hears sitting low 50-80 he’s not doing his stretches he’s not breathing and the drs think this is his brain…” 
• September 18 2017 update dad writes, “Alfie has been poorly over the last couple days [emoji emoji] He has two chest infections and a urine infection…” 
• During an October 13 2017 update Thomas Evans writes, “Alfie isn’t doing good atall,his oxygen is now 100% maximum level, his sats are sitting 88 89 90 and his heard rate is in 80s….” 
• An October 22 2017 post dad says “Alfie having a rubbish day today [emoji emoji] He’s back up in oxygen 80% Lots of secretions losing 80mls every 5 hours….” 
• On a November 3 2017 post dad then says, “Alfie not doing to good today [emoji emoji] He’s got chest infection, ute, and conjunctivitis he’s going through the wars….” 
• December 2 2017 update Thomas then writes a post saying “A top European children’s hospital wants to take Alfie: they have written to Alder Hey to confirm that they will take him. They have the facilities to arrive at a diagnosis of Alfie’s condition. We now need to arrange with Alder Hey to let Alfie go.” He then states he can not say anymore on the subject. 
• On December 3 2017 he then writes “Our little soldier has a chest infection….” 
• It was then on December 7 2017 that Thomas writes that Alder Hey won’t let Alfie be transferred to another hospital because Alfie is too sick to ever improve and he shouldn’t be forced to stay alive at this point and continue with his suffering. 
• On December 14 2017 dad writes how Alfie has had an infection for the past week.  
• January 14 2018 dad reveals that Alfie has had “corona virus over the last week so he’s been full of secretions…”

There weren’t many more posts after January, and no more posts revealing any additional health problems occurring with Alfie. No reasons are stated as to why the declining frequency of such posts but I would imagine it was in part due to a gag order since during this time frame the parents and the hospital ended up in court. It’s also possible the parents didn’t want anyone to focus on the negative aspects of Alfie’s potential continued care and only highlighted the moments that could be seen as showing he had a chance, and I’d imagine it was an extremely difficult time period for the family, thus making social media one of their last priorities and concerns.

    The above account of posts is heartbreaking to read. This only covers the time period from June 2017 until January 2018. Alfie’s suffering had been going on since December of 2016. I don’t hold any anomosity towards these parents mind you, nor would I ever think I had a right or a place to judge them. I honestly can’t say I would behave differently in their situation. I don’t know how I would react and I can’t imagine to know with any amount of accuracy. My head would say one thing, but my heart would say another, and for any parent facing the loss of a child the heart is all you hear. Like I point out in the beginning, this post isn’t about Thomas Evans or Katie James, or how they faced this impossible situation. It doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree with anything they’ve said or done either. I have nothing but the upmost respect for both of them, a heart full of compassion, and brain full of understanding how living through this could make anyone do or say anything that came to mind in the hopes of helping their child. I am so sorry for everything they, their families, and Alfie had to endure this entire time. Especially the manipulation and exploitation from the AV community. 


April 29, 2018 Edited to add proof was found showing Thomas Evans to have said in an AVer group, “Yes he has had 6 and we are aware that this could be a possibility” in regards to vaccines. The post says it’s 41 weeks old but I don’t have a date the screen shot was taken of the post. It’s also reported to have been found in SMV (Stop Mandatory Vaccination) on Facebook.