There was a time when doctors were being accused of playing God when they helped patients stay alive. Now they’re accusing doctors of playing God when doctors don’t want to force a baby who isn’t viable to stay alive. (Alive?)

There is a lot wrong in the medical world. I agree. And I too have had to tell doctors things they didn’t know about although they’re supposed to be the experts and I admit that it used to surprise me. Discovering that I sometimes knew more than the doctors I went to for advice.

I don’t have the impression that the Charlie Gard case is one of those.

Charlie is being abused, by having been forced to stay alive this long. He is NOT fighting.

After having been forced him to stay alive – against nature – for so long, the decent option is now to let him have that experimental treatment, as I’ve said in a previous post.

But what will happen if the treatment has no effect? There will be more accusations, more lawsuits and more media drama because this stopped being about Charlie Gard a long time ago.

They will then fight to continue to keep him on a ventilator. (The disagreement in court yesterday about what one of the parents apparently had said three months ago seems to indicate that, along with the statement that the parents will continue to fight for the baby as long as he continues to be on a ventilator.)

That said, there are no 100% guarantees in medical matters. Sometimes, someone does wake from a coma twenty years or so later. True. But someone who ends up in a coma used to be viable. That makes a big difference. It means there was a well-functioning body with the healing abilities that entails.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/charlie-gard-army-high-court-medical-experts-great-ormond-street-hospital-murder-doctors-lying-a7840236.html

“We will not be silenced,” they chanted.

Like I wrote above, this ceased to be about a little baby a long time ago. (I had that feeling from the beginning but I was not sure about it, and kept my opinion to myself until very recently.)

This is just as consumerist as wanting to design your own babies according to specs.

I hope that I am wrong about this. I do. I hope that they’ll take Charlie to the States and that a miracle occurs and he’ll grow into a strapping young man. But that’s not going to happen and I am afraid for little Charlie who is denied a say in this and who will also be denied a say if the treatment has no or no significant effect.

I heard a very significant mistake by an American news anchor yesterday.  She talked about the current “treatment”. But Charlie Gard is not being “treated” and the legal proceedings are not about GOSH wanting to stop a treatment, which some people apparently seem to think.

Read this, too (GOSH statement):
https://t.co/X9WHHjhl3u

Read also this (opinion piece in The Guardian):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/09/the-guardian-view-on-charlie-gard-reason-and-unreason?CMP=soc_3156

Also, there are huge differences between Charlie Gard’s situation and the situation of Ashya King and his parents, as I have mentioned before.

See: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/judgment-and-family-court-orders-in-the-matter-of-ashya-king/

Ashya King is healthy now.