Parents end legal fight
Baby Charlie’s family drop legal bid as medical tests deem his condition irreversible.
LONDON: The parents of critically ill baby Charlie Gard have dropped their legal bid to send him to the United States for experimental treatment after new medical tests showed that it could no longer help.
Lawyer Grant Armstrong said Chris Gard and Connie Yates were withdrawing their appeal at a London High Court hearing yesterday.
As the couple wept, Armstrong said recent medical tests on Charlie showed the baby had irreversible muscular damage.
“It’s too late for Charlie,” Armstrong said. “The damage has been done.”
He said the news had left Charlie’s parents extremely distressed and they now “wish to spend the maximum amount of time they have left with Charlie”.
The 11-month-old has a rare genetic condition and his parents wanted him to receive an experimental treatment.
Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital had argued that the treatment would not help and could cause the child pain.
They wanted to switch off his life support and allow him to die peacefully.
The case won international attention after Charlie’s parents received support from Pope Francis, US President Donald Trump and some members of the US Congress.
Judge Nicholas Francis had scheduled a two-day hearing to consider fresh evidence after Dr Michio Hirano, an American neurology expert from Columbia Medical Centre in New York, came to London to examine the child.
But Armstrong said nothing further could be done.
“Due to the delay in treatment, that window of opportunity has been lost,” he said.
A day earlier, a small group of about 20 activists supporting Gard’s parents, including some from the United States, had gathered outside the High Court in London.
Hospital chairman Mary MacLeod said they had to contact police due to numerous threats received by the hospital’s employees.
“Staff have received abuse both in the street and online,” she said.
“Thousands of abusive messages have been sent to doctors and nurses whose life’s work is to care for sick children.
“Many of these messages are menacing, including death threats,” she added.
MacLeod said families visiting other ill children had also been “harassed and discomforted” on the grounds of the renowned hospital in London.
Charlie’s parents had lost all previous court cases, including one before the European Court of Human Rights, which were designed to force the hospital to let them bring their son to the United States for the experimental treatment.