How the US is making political capital out of child’s fight for life
IN the very fiercest year of the Cold War, America’s doctors paid for a Hollywood star to record a warning on what they saw as a stalking horse for socialism in the United States. The actor? Ronald Reagan. The fifth column of statism? Modest reforms towards a British-style National Health Service.
Ever since that 1961 Reagan LP, free market theoreticians and a private medical lobby have been opining on the evils of what they call, almost always pejoratively, “socialised medicine”.
The story of tiny Charlie Gard, his muscles so weak he can’t open his eyelids, for them comes, therefore, as a perfect parable of cruel statism.
This weekend David Holberg, a prominent critic of America’s Medicare system, its tax-funded health service for pensioners created shortly after Mr Reagan’s notorious record, latched on to the story. In a direct hit at the Democrat senator Bernie Sanders, a champion of NHS style reforms, he said: “Bernie, why do you want little babies to die?”
Speaking of Charlie’s parents, he added: “Chris and Connie are willing to spend their own money to put Charlie on a plane and fly to America to receive treatment that might save his life. But the British medical and court systems have taken that decision out of their hands.”
This must be music to Donald Trump’s ears. The US President is currently trying to dismantle attempts by his Democrat predecessor to stop millions of people going without medical care. And here is an example of the NHS – in the propaganda of the right – murdering a baby.
Mr Trump took a break from threatening his free press to appeal for Charlie’s parents to take their son to America for experimental treatment. There is a problem with the narrative, however. It’s true that the child’s parents - and who could blame them? - want to go abroad for treatment, clutching on to every last hope.
The problem is doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, don’t believe they have grounds to think Charlie has a future and that flying him across the Atlantic would do more harm than good.
The hospital said: “One of the factors that influenced this decision was Charlie’s brain was shown to be extensively damaged at a cellular level. The clinician in the US offering the treatment agrees the experimental treatment will not reverse the brain damage that has already occurred.
“The entire highly experienced UK team, all those who provided second opinions and the consultant instructed by the parents all agreed further treatment would be futile – meaning it would be pointless or of no effective benefit.”
Crucially, judges agree. Sometimes a child has to be protected, even from those who love him or her most.
“It is standard procedure,” Great Ormond Street explained, to ask courts to intervene when doctors and parents of a child disagree on treatment. The powers of a parent over a child are not, after all, absolute.
And that is the case in America as much as in “socialised” Europe. In fact, there have been several cases in the US of high-profile disputes between parents and doctors resulting in the state effectively taking rights over children.
Baby Charlie’s case may be nightmarish and ethically very difficult. But it does not say much about the rights and wrongs of private v state medicine.
And Mr Reagan? He eventually accepted the poorest and the sickest should get free care.