Charlie Gard's parents 'optimistic' after new brain scan and examination by US neurosurgeon

Charlie Gard’s parents remain "optimistic" following a brain scan that will determine whether he can have experimental therapy.

The scan took place at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) where a US professor of neurosurgery examined the 11-month-old boy on Monday.

Prof Michio Hirano was studying the scan and other medical records before deciding whether he felt the boy could benefit from treatment for the rare mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome.

I find it interesting who decides what it means to “die with dignity”.

Is dying with dignity shutting everything down and drawing your last breath? Or is fighting as hard as you can and going down swinging not dignified?

Funny how we all hear that phrase and immediately think what they want us to think.

From the link:

‘An EEG brain scan was conducted on Sunday, the first since March. Prof Hirano has said that the scan in March did not evidence of irreversible brain damage.’

This was the problem. The scan in March wasn’t sufficiently dire/hopeless, so GOSH had to imprison Charlie for another 3+ mos, hoping for further deterioration.

Or if that’s not the case, why didn’t they release him for treatment in the US in March? I have been told I’m too harsh with GISH. From my POV, harshness is all their actions merit.

When the government is so charitable as to tax you into poverty so that it can “charitably” provide you with “free healthcare” then you are a slave. When a slave becomes a negative asset by being more expensive than what he/she is worth to the government that is when the “charity” will stop. So there you are, taxed into poverty with no money to pay for care that the government denies you and the you die a worthless slave.

I find it interesting who decides what it means to “die with dignity”.

GB has socialized medicine. Were the parents wealthier, they could have used a private hospital which would have allowed them to pursue the child's treatment in the US, unhindered.

The hospital, and the UK government, believe that the state, and not Charlie’s parents, should have the power to decide what is best for Charlie (and, presumably, others like him). And to drive that point home, they were willing to fight this case all the way to the EU Court of Human Rights. The injustice is that Charlie will die when the hospital administration wants, and where the hospital administration wants. His parents have been deprived of their right to supervise his case. They could not take him the U.S. for experimental treatment. They could not take him home, to die in peace. The hospital and the courts may believe that they are doing what is best for Charlie. But in reality, their actions are at root totalitarian. They have robbed the parents of their natural rights, and set the state up instead as the final arbiter of life and death.

More importantly,

The fact that Charlie is still fighting for his life poses a threat to socialized medicine, because the supposed experts had already given up hope, but his parents have persisted. If the experts are shown to be mistaken, it will call into question the larger trend towards euthanizing the seriously and chronically ill. If Charlie miraculously survives, it will be a stunning rebuke to the conceit that well-educated elites know better than the rest of us. Like Michael Banks in Mary Poppins, his feeble demand for his own two cents could trigger a run on the credibility of those in power, and that is why the government and the hospital have fought so cruelly and bitterly against his parents’ wishes. Read More

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