New hope for baby Charlie
CHARLIE Gard won a third dramatic reprieve last night.
Doctors bowed to global pressure to give the desperately ill baby another chance.
After being handed fresh evidence, Great Ormond Street Hospital yesterday asked the High Court to reopen the agonising case.
The little boy’s supporters – dubbed ‘Charlie’s Army’ – went wild with jubilation on social media.
The 11-month-old has twice survived plans to end his life support – last Friday and again this Monday. Pope Francis and Donald Trump have declared their support and yesterday seven international scientists came to Charlie’s rescue, urging his doctors to reconsider.
They are all experts in mitochondrial depletion syndrome, the incredibly rare genetic condition afflicting Charlie. The courts have ruled there was no evidence a proposed experimental drug therapy would work. But the seven said: ‘There is substantial direct and indirect evidence.’
Charlie’s parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard said the new evidence gave him a much higher chance of survival than previously thought.
They spent yesterday begging Great Ormond Street to let their son try the treatment.
After meeting the couple, the hospital said in a statement last night that international researchers ‘have communicated to us as late as the last 24 hours that they have fresh evidence about their proposed experimental treatment’.
It added: ‘We believe, in common with Charlie’s parents, it is right to explore this evidence. Great Ormond Street Hospital is therefore giving the High Court the opportunity to objectively assess the claims of fresh evidence. It will be for the High Court to make its judgment on the facts.’
A family spokesman said the extraordinary move ‘marked the end of an extremely traumatic and distressing week for his parents and the rest of his family’. She added: ‘Connie and Chris are like any loving parents. They have always put Charlie’s needs first and will continue to do so as they only want the very best for him.
‘They are optimistic their son will soon get the treatment he needs and want to thank those people from around the world who have sent them so many moving messages of support.’
Charlie is only the 16th sufferer worldwide of his rare type of mitochondrial disease, which saps energy from his muscles and organs and means his lungs are too weak to function alone.
Doctors say he is deaf, blind,
‘Went wild with jubilation’
brain damaged, in pain and beyond hope, and four courts have ruled his ‘best interests’ are served by life-support being removed and him ‘dying with dignity’.
After an American specialist offered to treat Charlie with experimental nucleosides therapy, British doctors told the High Court it would not work because the drug would not be able to breach what is known as the ‘blood brain barrier’ to treat malfunctioning cells.
But the experts wrote in their letter to Great Ormond Street: ‘In fact, there is substantial direct and indirect evidence clearly demonstrating that [the drugs] cross the blood brain barrier.’
Miss Yates said yesterday: ‘There is potential for him to be a completely normal boy, but we don’t know, as you just don’t know until you try. There’s around a 10 per cent chance of this working for Charlie.’
She did not explain how she had arrived at that estimate.
She told Good Morning Britain: ‘We are not bad parents, we are there for him all the time, we are completely devoted to him and he’s not in pain and suffering. I promise everyone I would not sit there and watch my son in pain and suffering, I couldn’t do it.’
The High Court is likely to regard the new application as urgent, and it could be heard on Monday.