The exploitation of baby Charlie Gard
A baby in Britain has become the centre of an international political and legal battle. Eleven-monthold Charlie Gard has a terminal medical condition, mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a progressive disease that causes muscle weakness, leaving sufferers unable to eat, walk, talk and eventually breathe.
Numerous doctors have said that death will come soon and that as any further treatment will be pointless and cause the child great suffering, they think it best to discontinue life support.
Perhaps understandably, Charlie’s parents have protested, taken the matter to Britain’s Supreme Court, which supported the doctors, and the European Court of Human Rights, which refused to intervene. Last week a judge said he would allow an American doctor who has used radical treatments to examine Charlie but the original decision still stands. Charlie has a right to die in dignity, the courts concluded, and not become the subject of experimentation.
It’s an excruciating case for the child’s parents but also for the medical staff, who are devoted to saving lives. Yet the family, the doctors and the lawyers can all hold their heads high, whatever the outcome of what is an issue of parental rights, the well-being of a voiceless child, and the struggle between painful reality and desperate hope.
Other people, however, have not been so ethical. Judges and doctors have been threatened and abused, various conservative Christian groups have tried to take ownership of the tragedy and even President Donald Trump has intervened, tweeting that, “If we can help little Charlie Gard as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so.”
It was typically irresponsible and insensitive. It’s unlikely that Trump properly understands the situation, it interferes with the legal and moral findings of medical experts and legal scholars in another country, and it’s colossally ironic that as he removes medical insurance from millions of Americans, the president makes an empty gesture to a dying child.
As for the Pope, he is obviously of more and deeper substance than Donald Trump but his remarks didn’t help. “The Holy Father is following with affection and emotion the situation of little Charlie Gard and expresses his closeness to his parents,” explained the Vatican. “He is praying for them, in the hope that their desire to accompany and care for their own child until the end will be respected.”
But this, surely, is more about the Roman Catholic Church’s strident opposition to anything that relates to assisted dying or euthanasia. Once again, there is some painful inconsistency here. Embryonic stemcell research is one of the vital research tools in finding cures to horrors such as that killing tiny Charlie. Rome condemns it.
And here’s the point. While people are moved by this story and feel impotent and angry, most are reasonable and know that such things simply happen. The terrible is sometimes inevitable. But then we have the hysterics and the attention-seekers: those who take their children along to spots where young people have died to leave a teddy bear or flowers in some dance macabre of alleged grief; the ones who achieve a vicarious fulfilment by being seen on camera screaming their emotion. They are out in force.
But more significant are the ranks of the Christian right — both Roman Catholic and evangelical — who now pack the social media support sites, the crowdfunding venues and the street demonstrations. An American evangelical minister named Patrick Mahoney, who has been imprisoned for picketing abortion clinics, suddenly appeared in London with a group of so-called pro-life activists to become involved. There he was, photographed by baby Charlie’s bed.
Many of the leaders of the Christian protest are intensely conservative, which is of course why Donald Trump rushed to their cause. Cutting foreign aid, expelling refugees and increasing military budgets are fine but on no account must we allow Charlie Gard to die.
They have transformed a deeply human story of loss into a great clash of cultures. Those who support the hospital and courts are called “baby-killers” and “murderers,” and the plight of a dying baby is said to represent the Christian struggle against decadence and atheism. It must be so agonizing for those who genuinely care.
It’s awful to watch and it’s less baby Jesus than baby exploitation. Frankly, it’s downright bloody shameful.