There are two issues here. And they are not the love of a child or the laws by the governing country. One is that there is no reason to say that the “cure” they are using is going to even help. It is an experimental drug, not a cure set up by our AMA or FDA. They don’t know if it will even work. So even though this illness is being called terminal, what do they have to lose? But that leads us to the second issue, quality of life. This phrase has not been in the forefront of the issue in a way that considers it a part of it. We have been told the child already has brain damage. Okay, how much? Will this experimental cure do anything about that? Probably not. Destroyed cells normally do not regenerate. So if this cure actually works, what type of life will, or can, or have the ability to consider, possibly have? Life is fragile, but sometimes death is peace. Why hurt for a few years? This needs to be weighed and decided if just having life is worth living? Or if death is the answer to the pain of no life whatsoever or one of pain and anguish. Hell of a choice, huh?
rwood
That sounds pretty much like this:
Are there lives that have forfeited their individual legal protection because their continued existence has permanently lost all value for the person himself, and for society as well? Simply posing this question brings up an uneasy feeling in anyone who has become accustomed to evaluating the value of a particular life to both the individual concerned and to society.... If one simultaneously thinks about a battlefield covered with thousands of dead young men, or a mine where a violent thunderstorm has buried alive hundreds of diligent workers, and compares it to an institution for imbeciles with its care for its living inmates, one is deeply shocked by the blatant dissonance between the sacrifice of the greatest treasure of humankind on one hand, and on the other, the greatest care being given to existences that are not only absolutely worthless, but that drag other worthy beings down negative existences.
Binding & Hoche
Redwood, who do you think should decide whether Charlie Gard, or anyone else with disabilities that according to you make their lives unenjoyable and thus not worth living, should die? The government? Hospitals? Other?
“and for society as well”
Society and legal protection have nothing to do with it. That is one of the most deplorable parts of the ACA. The death squads that sit in hiding that make decisions based upon finances and not the life involved.
If you believe life is sacred, and should be lived to the fullest, then I hope you never have to make the decision to allow a person that no longer lives it with nothing more than a few brain waves with no thought, no love, no laughter, no dreams, no connection to anybody or anything, and no future. If that’s living, then your and my definition are opposite. Life has to grow and get stronger. His can’t happen unless by one of ‘god’s miracles, he is spared this type of hell on earth. I don’t call that living. I call that existing. Rocks exist.
And yes I have been on that battlefield with the bodies of fallen soldiers. You call them young men. I call them fallen Americans that stood up for what they believe in and committed their all for their stand. And they didn’t do it for a few people they know. They did it for this entire country and no one can respect them enough. But they knew the possibilities when they walked into the recruiter’s office. They knew there was a possibility they were going to walk in front of a bullet. But a baby with brain damage, and again we don’t know the extent, may not know anything ever. He didn’t make that decision. God did. So if you are going to question anyone’s opinion on whether he should be allowed to pass, then why not question why he was placed in that situation to begin with? I don’t have that answer. I just know it exists and someone or thing greater than I has it. I can only answer for me.
rwood