The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Hospital asks court to rule on Charlie’s treatment
Parents of terminally-ill baby want him to be treated in US
Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) has applied to the High Court for a fresh hearing in the case of terminally-ill baby Charlie Gard “in light of claims of new evidence relating to potential treatment for his condition”.
A hospital spokesman said: “We believe, in common with Charlie’s parents, it is right to explore this evidence”.
Charlie inherited the faulty RRM2B gene from his parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard, affecting the cells responsible for energy production and respiration and leaving him unable to move or breathe without a ventilator.
The couple, from Bedfont, west London, want to take him to a hospital in the US but lost a lengthy legal battle after judges ruled in favour of doctors at Gosh, who argued the treatment would not improve the 11-month-old’s quality of life.
Under a High Court ruling, Gosh is forbidden from allowing Charlie to be transferred for nucleoside therapy anywhere.
It comes as researchers at the Vatican children’s hospital implored Charlie’s doctors to reconsider allowing an experimental treatment to be used, citing “new information”.
Clinicians from the Bambino Gesu paediatric hospital’s neurosciences department said tests in mice and patients with a similar genetic condition had shown “dramatic clinical improvements”.
Charlie’s case will be heard by Mr Justice Francis on Monday at 2pm, according to a High Court listing.
Ms Yates has said her son was “not in pain or suffering” and she had been given hope by international attempts to come to Charlie’s aid, including from the pope and US president Donald Trump.
The hospital said it will now be for the High Court to make its judgment on the facts and that it is acting in Charlie’s best interests.
A US hospital, which cannot be named for legal reasons, has offered to ship the drug to the UK to help Charlie, and Ms Yates said this had been offered as early as last December.
In his April ruling, Mr Justice Francis said the couple had, understandably, grasped at the possibility that the therapy might be “pioneering treatment”.
But he said it had never been tried on a patient with Charlie’s rare form of mitochondrial disease, there was “no evidence” it could help him, and testing it on him would be “unknown territory”.