Tears of Charlie’s mum as she’s told his chances are ‘vanishingly small’
CHARlIE Gard’s mother wept yesterday as a court heard there was a ‘vanishingly small’ chance of saving her terminally ill baby.
Connie Yates, 31, wearing a white flower in her hair, hung her head as doctors said her seven-monthold son should be allowed to die.
Even a US doctor who offered to try an experimental therapy on his rare genetic condition admitted he had not realised how unwell Charlie was.
But he said if the boy lived in the States, he would get the pioneering treatment his parents longed for.
During an emotional hearing at the High Court in london to decide Charlie’s fate, his father Chris Gard, 32, hurled his son’s cuddly toy monkey on to a bench in exasperation.
The defiant parents raised an astonishing £1.2million to take him to the US and pay his medical fees. More
‘In the terminal stages of his illness’
than 80,000 well-wishers gave money, including Tamara Ecclestone, who put in £10,000 and Tunbridge Wells housewife Helen Barnes, 45, who handed over £40,000.
In a dramatic twist yesterday, one of Charlie’s British doctors accused American medics being more interested in cash than his suffering. The Great Ormond Street Hospital expert told the court that UK doctors always put the child’s best interests first – but she said in America, ‘provided the parents have money, the doctors there would do anything the parents would like to be done, regardless of what is happening with the child.’ None of the doctors can be named.
The American doctor, giving evidence by phone, agreed that US medics were more likely to try ‘last-ditch treatments on those for whom death would otherwise be sadly inevitable’.
He has offered a therapy called nucleosides to treat Charlie’s dam- aged DNA. The youngster has a rare mitochondrial disease that saps energy from organs. But British doctors do not think it will work.
Mr Justice Francis must decide whether to agree to Great Ormond Street’s application to withdraw Charlie’s life support and let him ‘die with dignity’. Charlie’s parents, from Bedfont, south-west london, are begging him to give their son a chance. They received a glimmer of hope when the US doctor said Charlie would die without the treatment, but it might prolong his life.
However, the British expert said Charlie was ‘extremely unwell’ and likely to be feeling pain. He was also deaf, and left blind by eyelids too weak to open. She told the judge: ‘Charlie is suffering, and that outweighs the small theoretical chance that this may be effective treatment. It has never been about costs for us.’
Debra Powell QC, for the hospital, revealed that a doctor who saw Charlie’s brain scan from last week wrote: ‘I think he’s in the terminal stages of his illness.’ Miss Powell suggested there was now a ‘vanishingly small chance’ for Charlie.
Miss Yates and Mr Gard dispute the hospital’s analysis and believe he is growing stronger.
Mr Justice Francis adjourned Charlie’s case until today.