Connie Yates and Chris Gard have decided to end their five-month legal battle to take their son Charlie Gard to the United States for treatment. The baby suffers from a mitochondrial condition and on June 30 British officials ordered Charlie’s life support turned off. The child remained on life support as offers of help poured in from, among many others, Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump.
A judge told Connie Yates and Chris Gard that “no parent could have done more for their child,” but that is not quite right. The parents sought to do everything they could to save Charlie, but the British government monopoly health system prevented them from doing so.
The parents blamed “a whole lot of wasted time” for the deterioration of Charlie’s muscles revealed in a recent MRI scan. As they told reporters, “Had Charlie been given the treatment sooner he would have had the potential to be a normal, healthy little boy” adding, “Our poor boy has been left to just lie in hospital for months without any treatment whilst lengthy court battles have been fought.” Their son Charlie, “has been left with his illness to deteriorate, sadly, to the point of no return.”
Charlie Gard was born a healthy baby on August 4, 2016, but at eight months diagnosed with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage. Charlie began to lose weight but in January 2017 Connie Yates found an American doctor willing to offer the trial therapy known as nucleoside.
On April 3, 2017, a High Court judge questioned whether Connie and Chris should be allowed to take Charlie to America for treatment, and whether doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital should turn off the baby’s life-support system. On April 11, the court ruled that the doctors were in fact permitted to do so.
The decision devastated parents Connie and Chris, both in their thirties. In late April, more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling on Prime Minister Theresa May to release Charlie for travel to the United States. Charlie remained in hospital and on May 25, three Court of Appeal judges ruled that doctors should end the child’s life-support treatment.
On June 8, three judges of the Supreme Court rejected the parents’ appeal but told doctors to keep Charlie on life support for another day so the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, could consider the child’s case. On June 13, the ECHR ruled that Charlie should be kept on life support until Monday June 19.
On June 27, the European court rejected the parents’ plea to intervene in the case of Charlie Gard.
As the ECHR statement put it, “the decision is final.”
Charlie would be “allowed to die,” and the parents were told that this was in his best interest. Great Ormond Street Hospital bosses said they would be in no rush to change Charlie’s care and would engage in careful planning and discussion about the child’s fate.
As of this writing Charlie remains on life support. Connie and Chris will “let our son go and be with the angels,” but his story is far from over. Indeed, it brims with lessons for all but the willfully blind.
As the ordeal of Connie and Chris confirms, parents care more for their child than politicians, judges, courts, and hospital bosses. In tragic cases like Charlie’s, the parents need to believe they have exhausted all possibilities to save their child. Despite somber proclamations by British judges, Connie and Chris were not allowed to do so.
Connie and Chris have been battling a government monopoly, and in this system patients get only the care the government wants to give them. The British health service didn’t want to give Charlie the experimental treatment available in America. More important, the system also blocked Connie and Chris from taking Charlie to America, even at their own expense. He languished in hospital until, as the parents said, “the point of no return.”
As Charlie’s case confirms, government monopoly health care can involve a surrender of freedom of movement, the freedom to travel abroad. Once freedom of any kind is lost, it is hard to get it back. So best not to lose it in the first place.
Those working on health reform in the USA can learn a lot from the ordeal of Connie Yates and Chris Gard. The brave parents fought the good fight, but the government prevented them from doing their utmost for their beloved child. That’s the injustice inherent in the kind of government monopoly system Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want.
Adoption of that kind of system in America could be a point of no return for the people’s freedom of choice in health care. In cases of infants with rare conditions, it could be a matter of life and death. That is the enduring lesson of Charlie Gard, born on August 4, 2016.
“The System” raised its brutal fist in the face of the world from Britain today. It conceded, not in words, but in action how the parents of Charlie Gard had run out of time to secure outside help in trying to keep their baby alive.
The System proved its terrible might in demonstrating to a World On Watch how it is impossible for a vulnerable baby and his parents to survive after hitting the brick and mortar of its imperious walls.
Those who can plainly see how cheaply a progressive world values human life, join Charlie’s parents in their heartbreak.
Herman Cain writer Robert Laurie was so apt when he wrote: “This story is so tragic.”
“I’m old enough to remember a time when doctors would spare no effort - no matter how difficult or experimental - to save the life of a child. That’s no longer the case. Nowadays, it seems federally-run healthcare systems would rather its “problem cases” just shuffle off the mortal coil and spare “the system” a lot of headaches. Since single-payer care is the ultimate in rationed care, regulations and federal power trump life.”“...At least that’s what happened to Charlie Gard, whose parents have ended their efforts to take their son to the United States for treatment.“Gard will now be moved to pallative care where the NHS will guarantee he dies with dignity.”
“Dying with dignity” is the fairytale the Death Cult leave in their end-of-life script to cover for their guilt in the unnecessary deaths of innocents.
It’s first cousin to the meme used by abortion advocates who continue to call babies in the womb, “fetuses”.
“Essentially, what happened here is that the UK government “ran out the clock” by trapping these poor people in a maze of red tape. Time was of the essence and whatever hope Charlie had dwindled as the days passed. Now, the longshot treatment that was available in the U.S. will no longer work - so they’ve ended their efforts.” (Laurie)
As Christians, our hope, our reason for drudging on day after day lies in the reality, that Jesus is God, and He promised that one day He would return for us so that we could be where He is.
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:1-3
So where are we?
I’ve often wondered how long exactly the Lord would tarry. We know His return is imminent in the sense that it could happen at any moment, but would He stay His hand another few decades or come before the end of the month? Has the 2000 years been enough? Or does the increasing population on planet earth necessitate a longer time needed to fulfill the final harvest of men and womens’ souls? No one currently alive can peak into the future, and we are explicitly told by Jesus Himself that ‘no one will know the day or hour’ of His coming.
So how do we gauge were exactly we are in history?
Aside from scriptures, that leaves only looking around at our current state, and looking into the past to see where we’ve come from. We also know, that certain prophetic events that are currently in motion, have if you will, a shelf life. They just can’t continue to go on and on without some sort of finality to them.
If for nothing else, based on our level of achievement alone, we should realize that we are the well toward the end of the timeline, on the very trailing edge of our time left in this day and age we live in. With prophetic scriptures pinpointing exact events that would transpire coming to the forefront of the news daily showing without a doubt, both the validity and accuracy of the Bible telling us where we are.
No comments:
Post a Comment