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 -
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.