Killing Charlie Gard
Once upon a time, the highest lords in the land stopped the parents of a tiny, terribly ill child from trying to save him and instead ordered his death in the palliative-care ward.
It’s not some sick reverse fairy tale, but real news: British authorities insisted on taking little Charlie Gard off life support, rather than let his parents take him to America for an experimental treatment. They wouldn’t even let his family take him home to die.
A rare genetic condition (only 16 cases in the world) left Charlie suffering progressive muscle weakness and extensive brain damage.
His parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, desperately wanted to bring him to the States for a treatment that held out some hope, and they’d raised the money to pay for it.
“He just needs the treatment that’s going to potentially help him,” Connie pleaded.
But doctors in the National Health Service concluded it was best to just turn off the machines and feed him enough drugs so he’d die pain-free at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
And they didn’t care what the tot’s parents thought.
Chris and Connie waged a tooth-and-nail legal fight, all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights, and lost: The judges backed the credentialed experts.
Maybe the experts were right: Maybe the hope of treatment was false, the damage already too great. But why should they have the unilateral power to decide?
They probably had the best command of the facts — but no expert can claim special standing when it comes to values. How did this case meet what should be the extremely high standard for overruling parents’ decisions about their child’s care?
Whether you blame socialized medicine or soaring secularization, it’s no secret that European medicine and law hold ever-less respect for life. Euthanasia is growing more common and increasingly involuntary. “Compassion” somehow more and more dictates death.
To be clear: Rejecting extreme measures is a fully moral choice and every patient’s right, as no less than Pope John Paul II demonstrated in his final days.
But it’s hard to see any moral standard that empowers the state to prevent treatment that it isn’t even paying for and then not even allow an infant to die in his mother’s arms.