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But the judge said that “with a heavy heart” he had to agree to the hospital’s request to withdraw life-sustaining treatment as doctors and nurses agreed that all further interventions would be futile.

Given the circumstances I've had to go through the last week, I think I'm uniquely qualified to speak to this specific point.

My first brother who is 7 years younger than I suffered a massive brain aneurysm last Friday, August 10th. When the Paramedics arrived, he was not breathing and barely had a pulse. Somehow - miraculously - they managed to revive him and get him to the hospital.

The first hospital they took him to had no trauma facilities, so he was taken to a second hospital which had them. The second miracle was that he survived the trip(s) to the two hospitals.

By the time I arrived at the second hospital, approximately 90 minutes after his aneurysm he'd already received a second cat scan and two neurologists on duty read both of them.

My brother was literally dead by the time he hit the floor in his home. Both neurologists told us it was a miracle he was able to be revived at all. His aneurysm was in the worst place possible, deep inside his brain stem, where it meets the brain. Inoperable. By 4 pm last Friday afternoon we were given the news he would not survive, the aneurysm was still bleeding and choking off the blood supply to his brain.

As I, my sister and my youngest brother spoke with the doctors, they were very clear in telling us that very few survived his type of aneurysm, and what they expected would happen overnight to him as his brain's blood supply was choked off and eventually stopped.

I was with my brother when his reflexes shut down, and he stopped breathing on his own. All testing the doctors did showed that his brain had stopped functioning, and the only thing keeping him "going" was the ventilator and the drugs they used to keep his heart going.

He was no longer able to sustain himself in any way. His body temperature dropped on its own and the time came when the doctor's declared him deceased. The doctors did everything they could to save him, of that I'm convinced because I was there.

My brother was laid to rest on Thursday.

Now how is this relevant to this specific case? Simple. If the boy's heart is beating on it's own with no medical assistance and his reflexes are still functioning (ie: prick his hand with a needle and he reflexes on his own) then he is still alive and there is still hope.

If the doctors in this case were to prove death, there are a series of tests that are performed three times, six hours apart over a twenty-four hour period that confirm death. I've seen doctors perform these tests. If they haven't been performed on this young boy then they need to be to confirm whether he is alive and still "in there" or if he's dead. Any positive response to those tests would indicate hope for this young boy.

God bless these parents, please keep them and their son from all harm Lord, and above all else, Your will, Your way, Your time.

That’s eerily similar to my father’s passing, right down to the two hospitals.

That said, in the real world, you don’t have to be dead for death to be a certainty. You can be alive and “in there” as you put it, and well on your way to meet your maker. This boy might be “in there” but there is absolutely no way at this point that his lungs are ever going to regain function, and no way that prolonged ECMO isn’t going to kill him. It’s the proverbial being trapped under a car, with only the weight of the car keeping severed major arteries closed.

After conferring with my wife this morning, the more I think this is the abuse of a technology. ECMO is only supposed to be used for brief periods of time to give the heart and/or lungs a chance to heal. If there are no improvements in a very short period of time, it’s just a torture device that’s going to kill the patient, and soon.