Donald Trump Tweets U.S. ‘Would Be Delighted’ To Help Terminally Ill U.K. Infant

[IceAgeComing]

In the UK, children have rights separate from their parents on life and death medical issues.  When a child's doctors and their parents disagree on what would be the best course of action in the care of a child it's the responsibility of the legal system to consider all of the facts in a case and come to a conclusion.

My reading of the case suggests that Great Ormond Street considered the experimental treatment in the tail end of last year, but felt that Charlie had suffered considerable brain damage and that any attempts at treatment would be futile and therefore made the best interests application.  Professor Hirano had been in contact with GOSH since December last year; had been invited to examine Charlie in January, which was not taken up until last week - indeed, the court noted that he was providing evidence without having examined Charlie or looked at his records - there's also the fact that Hirano has a financial interest in the treatment, that sadly also has to be considered.  When he actually examined Charlie he said that there was no prospect of the treatment working - he may well have come to the same conclusions had he examined Charlie earlier and prevented this whole sad, sad mess.

I don't think that anyone involved in this was acting at all maliciously - the parents will naturally cling to whatever hope exists, the doctors at Great Ormond Street will always act in the interests of their patients and sometimes that's not holding them in a painful limbo until they eventually die; and Hirano probably genuinely believed that if it potentially was viable - perhaps it was if he'd examined Charlie earlier.  The two people who I hold contempt for in this thing are the incredibly odious people who'll tie all this to the NHS and talk about " STATE DOCTORS KILLING CHILDREN" and the awful parts of the American-influenced pro-life movement who'll cling to anything like this to push their agenda; even when there is realistically no hope for anything better.  The way that they've used this sad, sad case to push their toxic crap is awful.