ActRight

Save Pippa Knight

Honorable Prime Minister and Members of Parliament:

I write with an urgent matter to beseech you to intervene to spare the life of a beautiful, much loved, five-year old girl named Pippa Knight. Young Pippa has sadly endured a horrific medical ordeal. At 20 months of age, Pippa was diagnosed with acute necrotising encephalopathy (“ANE”) from which she suffered very severe brain damage. Her mother, Paula Parfitt, has selflessly devoted herself to caring for Pippa, initially at home, but as her health deteriorated for the past two years in a UK hospital funded by the National Health Service.  Paula is by Pippa’s bedside in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit some 16 hours a day.

Despite this demonstration of selfless love, government medical officials say that Pippa has slipped into a persistent vegetative state. She is dependent on mechanical ventilation and her hospital doctors say she neither feels pain nor is able to experience comfort or pleasure.  They say there’s no prospect for improvement of her condition and want to remove her care and let her die. This, they claim, is in Pippa’s “best interests.” Incredibly, the courts have ruled that the hospital may stop her care resulting in her death.

Paula Parfitt, Pippa’s mom, is the one person in the world who loves her unconditionally and who has spent virtually every waking hour at her side. Paula strongly differs with the doctors. She believes that Pippa can feel comfort, has exhibited signs of improvement and shows an awareness of her family and circumstances from which she derives pleasure. Paula wants Pippa’s doctors to be allowed to explore an unconventional change in her treatment concerning how she is ventilated which she hopes might allow her to eventually bring Pippa home. Several medical specialists not associated with the hospital agree that a test of this unconventional approach is warranted under strict conditions, but the hospital has refused.

Government hospital administrators may have the legal power to let Pippa die, but they do not have the moral authority to play God. There is a better way. You have the power to give Pippa her right to life.

I am asking you to direct the appropriate UK government authorities to allow medical professionals to explore a change in how Pippa is mechanically ventilated so that, should she tolerate the change well, she might eventually be transitioned to be cared for at home by her loving mother and family and trained medical professionals.

This is a matter of the utmost urgency, one of extraordinary interest throughout the United Kingdom and indeed the civilized world. There is no guarantee that Pippa would tolerate the change in her ventilation and eventually be able to transition to home care. But there is every guarantee that allowing hospital administrators to stop providing her needed care will result in her imminent death.

Please act to protect Pippa’s right to life. Thank you.