Posted on 07/29/2017 1:26:17 AM PDT by Morgana
This kind of reaction and coverage is not what the left wants.
It exposes the evil of abortion their support for it, because if they had their way Charlie would have never taken his first breath.
Charlie Gard was a human baby, reduced to an object under a government owned healthcare system. He and his parents seem to have lost all their rights and it should sound a siren to the US. By the way, elites find ways to avoid such a dilemma under such a system which is set up for the “common” folks. Obamacare is a forerunner of such a system and was designed to bring it about.
Little Charlie never had a chance from the moment he was conceived with two defective copies of the RRM2B gene that is necessary for life.
There is not and never was an experimental treatment that had a scientifically supported chance to save him. There only was a fiscally motivated researcher who irresponsibly told Charlie’s parents that he was willing to give Charlie an almost identical experimental “treatment” that the GOSH hospital had already decided would be unethical once they determined how profound Charlie’s brain damage was. At best, there was a minuscule chance the “treatment” might have improved his muscle tone. This may not have been good for Charlie, who was suffering status epilepticus—prolonged seizures—since November. Improved muscle tone could have led to the seizures being convulsive instead of just confined to brain activity.
The financial interests of Dr. Hirano in the case are recorded in the court proceedings. He had not examined Charlie or even really read his records before testifying by video that he was willing to “treat” Charlie.
Charlie’s parents can help children in the future, if they turn his body over to research. By studying the gene defects and understanding the full range of their effects, researchers can rationally design and test various therapeutic approaches, and perhaps come up with something that will actually stop the damage in children like Charlie, before the disease has a chance to destroy their muscles and brain.
Every single day, dozens of infants are born who, like Charlie, have a condition incompatible with life. Instead of focusing on the fact that multiple researchers, physicians, and judges looked at the evidence and agreed that experimenting on Charlie would not have been in his best interest, how about focusing on supporting the research that leads (ethically) to cures for these children?
Dr Hirano said: ‘I became involved in Charlie’s case when I was contacted by his parents, and I subsequently agreed to speak with his doctors to discuss whether an experimental therapy being developed in my lab could provide meaningful clinical improvement in Charlie’s condition.
‘As I disclosed in court on July 13, I have relinquished and have no financial interest in the treatment being developed for Charlie’s condition.
‘Unfortunately, an MRI scan of Charlie’s muscle tissue conducted in the past week has revealed that it is very unlikely that he would benefit from this treatment.’
Downloadable statement of GOSH as entered in the court record.
Excerpt from court statement, found on page 4:
10. When the hospital was informed that the Professor had new laboratory findings causing him to believe NBT would be more beneficial to Charlie than he had previously opined, GOSH’s hope for Charlie and his parents was that that optimism would be confirmed. It was, therefore, with increasing surprise and disappointment that the hospital listened to the Professor’s fresh evidence to the Court. On 13 July he stated that not only had he not visited the hospital to examine Charlie but in addition, he had not read Charlie’s contemporaneous medical records or viewed Charlie’s brain imaging or read all of the second opinions about Charlie’s condition (obtained from experts all of whom had taken the opportunity to examine him and consider his records) or even read the Judge’s decision made on 11 April. Further, GOSH was concerned to hear the Professor state, for the first time, whilst in the witness box, that he retains a financial interest in some of the NBT compounds he proposed prescribing for Charlie. Devastatingly, the information obtained since 13 July gives no cause for optimism. Rather, it confirms that whilst NBT may well assist others in the future, it cannot and could not have assisted Charlie.
This record is pretty incriminating of Hirano's motives, IMHO.
Note: all emphasis is mine.
Never let it be said there is no capital punishment in Britain. Just try being an imperfect child. They learned well from Nazi Germany.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4099640/dr-michio-hirano-denies-financial-interest-charlie-gard/
there are several articles where the doctor fights back against hospital’s representation of financial interest. this is one.
I think the court record is more reliable than any statements that Hirano might have made to the press afterwards.
His behavior in the Charlie Gard case may well open him up to scrutiny that he does not want. For instance, he has been “treating” kids with a different mitochondrial disease with his concoction—has the FDA reviewed and approved this “treatment”? Has his protocol been reviewed and approved by an ethics committee? Has he complied with all of the relevant regulations regarding experimentation on human subjects?
If not, then I fully understand why he would go into damage control mode now. He testified under oath that he has a financial interest in the “treatment”—that looks bad. So he makes public statements afterwards that contradict the testimony? I’m not impressed.
From the get-go, it sounded like Charlie’s parents had come into contact with an opportunist, and unfortunately were not able to recognize that fact.
i don’t see official court record ofthe Hirano testimony anywhere - just gosh statement. do you have? i think GOSH is worried about a lawsuit -
I pointed out to a local Libtard on Facebook that little Charlie’s plight was a direct result of the NHS bureaucracy in the UK. I haven’t heard back.
They now give the death penalty to innocent people who just happen to be ill.
Here is an earlier downloadable statement that the GOSH hospital submitted into the court record.
In most cases where the medical staff determines that further care is futile and the family disagrees, the courts will usually give the family the option of transferring the patient to another hospital if that hospital is willing to take the patient. In most cases, there is no hospital willing to take on a patient who cannot be expected to improve upon treatment, and the patient ends up being removed from life support. Charlie Gard's case is different precisely because his parents contacted Dr. Hirano, and Hirano irresponsibly said that he would be willing to treat Charlie, without ever looking at the case history.
I saw a statement from the judge a few days ago, that he should have disallowed any testimony from anyone who had not personally examined the child. That is excellent 20/20 hindsight: Dr. Hirano had shown little interest in personally examining Charlie until the media firestorm in July; he had been invited to visit and examine Charlie in January. I think that if the judge had stipulated that only experts who had personally examined Charlie and reviewed his medical records would have been allowed to testify, most of the media circus and its consequences could have been avoided.
The summary of the court decision makes it clear that the mitochondrial disease expert employed by GOSH and Dr. Hirano did not fundamentally disagree on the facts of Charlie's case. The only disagreement was that the staff of GOSH did not think it ethical to treat Charlie when the seriousness of his disease became apparent, and Hirano wanted to give him the chemical mixture anyway.
I will note here that Hirano's publications in the medical literature show that very little research has been done using those compounds. There is some cell culture research, and tests in mice that have a different mitochondrial disease. Based on people's reactions when I point out that Dr. Hirano is researching a *different* mitochondrial disease, I think there is not much understanding of just how significant that is. That is like someone curing diabetes and claiming that their treatment would work for pancreatic cancer--because those are both diseases of the endocrine system. Medicine doesn't work that way.
i saw that - but i was asking for/i was looking for transcript of Dr H’s testimony to which he refers in which he speaks of having disclosed that he relinquished financial interest in his own therapy. since he never saw important Charlie data until way late i don’t think anyone disagrees that the clock had run out. but i don’t think it’s fair to impugn his reputation by suggesting he was taking financial advantage unless you have evidence. also i was bothered that the hospital never shared the last scan with the parents before springing it on them in court which was very upsetting. the whole thing is sad.
According to the court summary, the full transcripts will be released at a later date. They have to be anonymized prior to release.
Even without direct sworn testimony from Hirano, I would suspect a financial motive because of the sum Charlie’s parents raised through GoFundMe, that Hirano stood to gain if they would have carried through with their plan to come to the US for “treatment.” One and a half million dollars is a LOT to a researcher, who typically is scrambling for funding.
Hirano’s public claims that he is not motivated by money sound very self-serving to me. In the UK, people have attributed his motives entirely to greed, and in fact are saying that the US is an amoral country because a doctor will treat anyone with anything as long as they get the money. Clearly, they do not know anything of American regulations regarding patient care and research on human subjects. Dr. Hirano is *not* representative of American doctors, either MDs or PhDs—most of us, although always scrambling for money, would never subject a patient to an untested chemical mixture, regardless of how it behaved in early drug development. In the US, a few people (like me) are also questioning Hirano’s motives, and I think more people will question them as the emotional firestorm dies down.
yes hospitals/doctors/nursing staff are expensive without experimental drugs. i find your suspicions a bit overdrawn. i see they are being drummed up in Br tabloids. we shall see.
I have my suspicions in part because of the behavior exhibited by all parties (it looks like a situation in which a scamming quack tried to profit off a family tragedy) and because of my interest in research integrity and ethics. What Charlie’s parents were trying to do in this case is so far from my experience with reviewing research protocols, sitting in on ethics discussions, conducting and overseeing research etc., that I frankly find it shocking.
Exactly, criminals have nothing to fear, they can even run hospitals and sit on the judicial bench. Imperfect or unborn babies have plenty to fear.
At least when there was a bonafide death penalty a person was afforded a judge and jury before being sentenced to death. But now, the helpless unhealthy human gets a hearing all right by a group of ethics judges without the victim even being present.
so be it. the doctor appears to be well respected in medical community http://columbianeurology.org/profile/mhirano -
one of America’s best, i read somewhere - who is devoting his life to experimentation. i hope he has success with others as he did with Art Estopinan (sp?). toodles.
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