Parents want to take Charlie Gard home
Doctors worried about child’s safety, advise hospice or third party
Charlie Gard’s parents have one last wish: They want to take their terminally ill 11month-old son home to die.
Charlie’s mother, Connie Yates, returned to court Tuesday, one day after the couple ended a long legal battle to bring Charlie to the U.S. for experimental therapy.
Grant Armstrong, the parents’ lawyer, said they are in discussions with Great Ormond Street Hospital about sending Charlie home, but there were obstacles.
Those appeared to be the practical difficulties of caring for a child who needs a ventilator and oxygen. Lawyers for the hospital said Charlie’s British doctors wanted to involve a third party to make sure the infant was safe. His parents rejected that option.
The hospital believes that a hospice would be a more suitable environment. It’s not clear whether the parents will accept that. Armstrong said the couple want a “few days of tranquility outside the hospital before Charlie passes away.”
Charlie suffers from mitochondrial depletion syndrome, a rare genetic disease that has left him with brain damage. He is unable to breathe unassisted and is deaf and blind.
His parents accepted Monday that his condition has deteriorated to the point where the experimental therapy offered by a U.S. neurologist would not work.
The hospital has given no indication when it will turn off his life-support machines.