I'm not quite sure if we're talking about the same thing; the two parents
never said that the kid would die if he underwent the surgery, only that his
soul would escape. This would leave him "soul-dead," for lack of a better
phrase. And how are we to tell that they weren't right? I don't think it's
quite as cut and dried as you seem to present.

(And again, they were acting very much out of their real beliefs of how
the universe operates. If someone here is injured, and declared brain dead,
most folks think it's okay to pull the plug...even though one could make the
argument that there's still a living soul in the body. This is the opposite
situation; one may argue that there is still a mind somewhere in the body, but
the soul is dead or gone. The phrase they use is that they put the shell out
of its misery. To their mind, he was dead already.)

jms