The saga of Charlie Gard, the little English boy afflicted with a rare genetic disease, is coming to an end. His parents have decided it was too late for him to recover and will allow their son to slip away at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where he has been a patient for many months. This means the parents have decided to put an end to their legal battle to be allowed to have Charlie flown to the US for pioneering treatment that they hoped might have saved his life.
'Poor Charlie. It is too late. The damage has been done. Sadly time has run out. The window of opportunity no longer exists. The parents have taken an extremely hard decision', the family's lawyer said today in court.
According to the parents, Charlie might have had a chance had he been allowed to go to the US in January, but the doctors at GOSH went to court to stop the parents from taking the child elsewhere, even though they had come up with the money needed thanks to a fund-raising campaign.
Maybe he had a chance, maybe he never had one. No one will never know.
What the tragic story of Charlie Gard taught us is the state has too big a role in deciding what's best for a child. The parents had the right to seek treatment for their son, but instead they were taken to court. They are the ones to be tormented for the rest of their lives with haunting "what if" questions. The big-shot medical experts will move on to the next patient, the judges will have other decisions to make, it is not their loss. Their lives will go on undisturbed, but Charlie's parents will forever ask themselves "what if".
Charlie's case was an extreme one, but the fact is we, parents, have little say in our children's lives. The state dictates what vaccines a child must get, when he must go to school, what meds should he be on. The situation is different from country to country, but the trend is to make government decisions mandatory for the parents. Brave new world!
If you want to know more about this case: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4723092/Charlie-Gard-s-fate-decided-TODAY.html