Poor Charlie Gard - A Victim of Government Controlled Healthcare

[Coyote]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

Maybe YOU should read it .... particularly paragraphs 14 thru 19.

Sadly, the child has a very small chance of recovery. We accept that as a reality ... but that doesn't mean that the parents shouldn't be allowed to exercise every avenue available to them. To deny them - the parents - of their rights, prerogatives, and alternatives, is as devastating as the illness to their child. Can you imagine sitting around the house for the next 40 years and saying, "We didn't do all we could for Charlie. The government wouldn't let us. They took our child away so they could kill it."

Parents can eventually accept the death of a child - they find comfort in the recognition that it was God's choice. Parents can't accept that some other person, some other government agency, can cause the death of their child.

A father and mother will go to the end of the world - explore any possibility - for a miracle that might save their child. I know. I did it. My miracle didn't work - but I take comfort knowing that I did everything I could for Michael. I can tell you, with all honest sincerity, losing a child is horrific. If somebody were to take my child from me, if somebody were to try to prevent me from trying every possible avenue for my child, I would hunt him to the ends of the earth. There would be no forgiveness.

Is it now more about the parents than about Charlie? Possibly. But, how can you, with any certitude, simply say that Charlie has to die, that Charlie has to be denied even the slimmest, most remote, possibility of recovery? How can you be so cold and so callous to allow another human being to judge when your child should die?

Is it about socialized medicine? You damned right it is. The government has usurped the rights of the parents. They have made themselves judge, jury, AND executioner. They have placed themselves above God.

I don't think it's about socialized medicine. The family has after all raised the money to pay for it privately and even with socialized medicine individuals who can afford it, have always been able to seek outside care on their own.

 

[Coyote]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

There aren't any "bad guys" in this case, and it's a shame folks are trying to turn it into that kind of scenario. It's tragic for everyone, most especially the parents who are losing their child, and you can't blame them for wanting to try. Everyone is trying to do what they thing is best for the child.

And the side representing the child has a valid argument also:

​

• • Great Ormond Street Hospital did apply for ethical permission to attempt nucleoside therapy on Charlie - a treatment that has never been used on patients with this form of MDDS. By the time that decision was made, Charlie’s condition had greatly worsened and the view was that his epileptic encephalopathy was such that his brain damage was severe and irreversible that treatment was potentially painful but incapable of achieving anything positive for him.
  • Nucleoside therapy has been referred to as “pioneering treatment”. In fact, this type of treatment has not even reached the experimental stage on mice let alone been tried on humans with this particular strain of MDDS.
  • It is the view of all those who have treated and been consulted in relation to Charlie such treatment would be “futile”. This was specifically stated by the Judge who adjudicated in the High Court Trial, Mr Justice Francis, that the treatment:
    “would be of no effect but may well cause pain, suffering and distress to Charlie.”
  
  
  

 

[Penelope]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

Maybe YOU should read it .... particularly paragraphs 14 thru 19.

Sadly, the child has a very small chance of recovery. We accept that as a reality ... but that doesn't mean that the parents shouldn't be allowed to exercise every avenue available to them. To deny them - the parents - of their rights, prerogatives, and alternatives, is as devastating as the illness to their child. Can you imagine sitting around the house for the next 40 years and saying, "We didn't do all we could for Charlie. The government wouldn't let us. They took our child away so they could kill it."

Parents can eventually accept the death of a child - they find comfort in the recognition that it was God's choice. Parents can't accept that some other person, some other government agency, can cause the death of their child.

A father and mother will go to the end of the world - explore any possibility - for a miracle that might save their child. I know. I did it. My miracle didn't work - but I take comfort knowing that I did everything I could for Michael. I can tell you, with all honest sincerity, losing a child is horrific. If somebody were to take my child from me, if somebody were to try to prevent me from trying every possible avenue for my child, I would hunt him to the ends of the earth. There would be no forgiveness.

Is it now more about the parents than about Charlie? Possibly. But, how can you, with any certitude, simply say that Charlie has to die, that Charlie has to be denied even the slimmest, most remote, possibility of recovery? How can you be so cold and so callous to allow another human being to judge when your child should die?

Is it about socialized medicine? You damned right it is. The government has usurped the rights of the parents. They have made themselves judge, jury, AND executioner. They have placed themselves above God.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

Maybe YOU should read it .... particularly paragraphs 14 thru 19.

Sadly, the child has a very small chance of recovery. We accept that as a reality ... but that doesn't mean that the parents shouldn't be allowed to exercise every avenue available to them. To deny them - the parents - of their rights, prerogatives, and alternatives, is as devastating as the illness to their child. Can you imagine sitting around the house for the next 40 years and saying, "We didn't do all we could for Charlie. The government wouldn't let us. They took our child away so they could kill it."

Parents can eventually accept the death of a child - they find comfort in the recognition that it was God's choice. Parents can't accept that some other person, some other government agency, can cause the death of their child.

A father and mother will go to the end of the world - explore any possibility - for a miracle that might save their child. I know. I did it. My miracle didn't work - but I take comfort knowing that I did everything I could for Michael. I can tell you, with all honest sincerity, losing a child is horrific. If somebody were to take my child from me, if somebody were to try to prevent me from trying every possible avenue for my child, I would hunt him to the ends of the earth. There would be no forgiveness.

Is it now more about the parents than about Charlie? Possibly. But, how can you, with any certitude, simply say that Charlie has to die, that Charlie has to be denied even the slimmest, most remote, possibility of recovery? How can you be so cold and so callous to allow another human being to judge when your child should die?

Is it about socialized medicine? You damned right it is. The government has usurped the rights of the parents. They have made themselves judge, jury, AND executioner. They have placed themselves above God.

I have and this has nothing to do with socialized medicine. I see you picked and chose what to post:

1. [1] in the USA who was, reportedly, offering what had been referred to as "pioneering treatment". Before he gave evidence, I encouraged the treating consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital to speak with him which he was able and willing to do. I am truly grateful to these experts for the time that they have given to this case. The outcome of that discussion is illuminating. The doctor in the USA said as follows:
   1. "Seeing the documents this morning has been very helpful. I can understand the opinions that he is so severely affected by encephalopathy that any attempt at therapy would be futile. I agree that it is very unlikely that he will improve with that therapy. It is unlikely."
2. However, the US doctor made it clear that, were Charlie in the United States, he would treat him if the parents so desired and could pay for it. As I have already said, funding in this case is not an issue. The US doctor also confirmed during this telephone conversation that he had never treated with nucleoside therapy anyone who had encephalopathy. Therefore, he was unable to indicate from any scientific basis whether a patient with encephalopathy would respond positively.
3. Charlie suffers from the RRM2B mutation of MDDS. No one in the world has ever treated this form of MDDS with nucleoside therapy, although patients with a different strain, TK2, have received nucleoside therapy with some recorded benefit. In mouse models, the benefit to TK2 patients was put at about 4% of life expectancy. There is no evidence that nucleoside therapy can cross the blood/brain barrier which it must do to treat RRM2B, although the US doctor expressed the hope that it might cross that barrier.
4. There is unanimity among the experts from whom I have heard that nucleoside therapy cannot reverse structural brain damage. I dare say that medical science may benefit objectively from the experiment, but experimentation cannot be in Charlie's best interests unless there is a prospect of benefit for him.
5. The Great Ormond Street Team believe that Charlie can probably experience pain, but is unable to react to it in a meaningful way. Their evidence was that being ventilated, being suctioned, living as Charlie does, are all capable of causing pain. Transporting Charlie to the USA would be problematic, but possible. Subjecting him to nucleoside therapy is unknown territory - it has never even been tested on mouse models - but it may, or may not, subject the patient to pain, possibly even to mutations. But if Charlie's damaged brain function cannot be improved, as all seem to agree, then how can he be any better off than he is now, which is in a condition that his parents believe should not be sustained?

Now there comes a time when one needs to let go. That genetic org in the UK is very established. You did not read the first link. You just want to complain about socialize medicine.

If you Christian Pubs truly believed in life after death , you'd be more willing to let this baby go to that world. As it is if the Rep GOP here in the US is going to cut medical care for people. I guess them being white instead of Muslim its ok to give free healthcare, are they married, I don't think so, but that is ok.

I feel bad for them, as they can't really mate since they both carry the genes, the US Health Secretary Price probably had a shit fit when Trump said bring little Charlie to the US. He is against pre cancer screening, and stem cell research. Chose your battles wisely. Little Charlie has had excellent Doctors, the best money could buy.

 

[Spare_change]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

Maybe YOU should read it .... particularly paragraphs 14 thru 19.

Sadly, the child has a very small chance of recovery. We accept that as a reality ... but that doesn't mean that the parents shouldn't be allowed to exercise every avenue available to them. To deny them - the parents - of their rights, prerogatives, and alternatives, is as devastating as the illness to their child. Can you imagine sitting around the house for the next 40 years and saying, "We didn't do all we could for Charlie. The government wouldn't let us. They took our child away so they could kill it."

Parents can eventually accept the death of a child - they find comfort in the recognition that it was God's choice. Parents can't accept that some other person, some other government agency, can cause the death of their child.

A father and mother will go to the end of the world - explore any possibility - for a miracle that might save their child. I know. I did it. My miracle didn't work - but I take comfort knowing that I did everything I could for Michael. I can tell you, with all honest sincerity, losing a child is horrific. If somebody were to take my child from me, if somebody were to try to prevent me from trying every possible avenue for my child, I would hunt him to the ends of the earth. There would be no forgiveness.

Is it now more about the parents than about Charlie? Possibly. But, how can you, with any certitude, simply say that Charlie has to die, that Charlie has to be denied even the slimmest, most remote, possibility of recovery? How can you be so cold and so callous to allow another human being to judge when your child should die?

Is it about socialized medicine? You damned right it is. The government has usurped the rights of the parents. They have made themselves judge, jury, AND executioner. They have placed themselves above God.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

Maybe YOU should read it .... particularly paragraphs 14 thru 19.

Sadly, the child has a very small chance of recovery. We accept that as a reality ... but that doesn't mean that the parents shouldn't be allowed to exercise every avenue available to them. To deny them - the parents - of their rights, prerogatives, and alternatives, is as devastating as the illness to their child. Can you imagine sitting around the house for the next 40 years and saying, "We didn't do all we could for Charlie. The government wouldn't let us. They took our child away so they could kill it."

Parents can eventually accept the death of a child - they find comfort in the recognition that it was God's choice. Parents can't accept that some other person, some other government agency, can cause the death of their child.

A father and mother will go to the end of the world - explore any possibility - for a miracle that might save their child. I know. I did it. My miracle didn't work - but I take comfort knowing that I did everything I could for Michael. I can tell you, with all honest sincerity, losing a child is horrific. If somebody were to take my child from me, if somebody were to try to prevent me from trying every possible avenue for my child, I would hunt him to the ends of the earth. There would be no forgiveness.

Is it now more about the parents than about Charlie? Possibly. But, how can you, with any certitude, simply say that Charlie has to die, that Charlie has to be denied even the slimmest, most remote, possibility of recovery? How can you be so cold and so callous to allow another human being to judge when your child should die?

Is it about socialized medicine? You damned right it is. The government has usurped the rights of the parents. They have made themselves judge, jury, AND executioner. They have placed themselves above God.

I have and this has nothing to do with socialized medicine. I see you picked and chose what to post:

1. [1] in the USA who was, reportedly, offering what had been referred to as "pioneering treatment". Before he gave evidence, I encouraged the treating consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital to speak with him which he was able and willing to do. I am truly grateful to these experts for the time that they have given to this case. The outcome of that discussion is illuminating. The doctor in the USA said as follows:
   1. "Seeing the documents this morning has been very helpful. I can understand the opinions that he is so severely affected by encephalopathy that any attempt at therapy would be futile. I agree that it is very unlikely that he will improve with that therapy. It is unlikely."
2. However, the US doctor made it clear that, were Charlie in the United States, he would treat him if the parents so desired and could pay for it. As I have already said, funding in this case is not an issue. The US doctor also confirmed during this telephone conversation that he had never treated with nucleoside therapy anyone who had encephalopathy. Therefore, he was unable to indicate from any scientific basis whether a patient with encephalopathy would respond positively.
3. Charlie suffers from the RRM2B mutation of MDDS. No one in the world has ever treated this form of MDDS with nucleoside therapy, although patients with a different strain, TK2, have received nucleoside therapy with some recorded benefit. In mouse models, the benefit to TK2 patients was put at about 4% of life expectancy. There is no evidence that nucleoside therapy can cross the blood/brain barrier which it must do to treat RRM2B, although the US doctor expressed the hope that it might cross that barrier.
4. There is unanimity among the experts from whom I have heard that nucleoside therapy cannot reverse structural brain damage. I dare say that medical science may benefit objectively from the experiment, but experimentation cannot be in Charlie's best interests unless there is a prospect of benefit for him.
5. The Great Ormond Street Team believe that Charlie can probably experience pain, but is unable to react to it in a meaningful way. Their evidence was that being ventilated, being suctioned, living as Charlie does, are all capable of causing pain. Transporting Charlie to the USA would be problematic, but possible. Subjecting him to nucleoside therapy is unknown territory - it has never even been tested on mouse models - but it may, or may not, subject the patient to pain, possibly even to mutations. But if Charlie's damaged brain function cannot be improved, as all seem to agree, then how can he be any better off than he is now, which is in a condition that his parents believe should not be sustained?

Now there comes a time when one needs to let go. That genetic org in the UK is very established. You did not read the first link. You just want to complain about socialize medicine.

If you Christian Pubs truly believed in life after death , you'd be more willing to let this baby go to that world. As it is if the Rep GOP here in the US is going to cut medical care for people. I guess them being white instead of Muslim its ok to give free healthcare, are they married, I don't think so, but that is ok.

I feel bad for them, as they can't really mate since they both carry the genes, the US Health Secretary Price probably had a shit fit when Trump said bring little Charlie to the US. He is against pre cancer screening, and stem cell research. Chose your battles wisely. Little Charlie has had excellent Doctors, the best money could buy.

Bullshit - there NEVER comes a time to let go - until ALL options are explored. Your faux sympathy is betrayed by your callous injections of an attack against Christians.

As for your hearty support for English medicine, I couldn't disagree more. I spent 5 years in northern England, and lived "on the economy" including healthcare. Frankly, English medicine doesn't hold a candle to the quality of care in the US.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Charlie Gard case to be given another hearing...

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment
Monday 10th July, 2017 — The British parents of a terminally ill baby, facing another court hearing on his condition and care, said Sunday they are hopeful he will receive the experimental treatment that previous rulings have prevented.

"If he's still fighting, we're still fighting," said Connie Yates, the mother of 11-month-old Charlie Gard. Yates and Charlie's father, Chris Gard, spoke outside London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, where the baby is in intensive care and on life support. The baby's parents have received support from Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump, but Charlie's future remains in the hands of British courts charged with determining what is best for him. "He's our son, he's our flesh and blood. We feel that it should be our right as parents to decide to give him a chance at life," Yates, carrying a petition signed by some 350,000 people supporting the couple's quest, said. "There is nothing to lose, he deserves a chance."

The complex case appeared to have reached its end last month, when the European Court of Human Rights refused to overturn British court rulings barring Charlie from traveling to the United States for treatment. The hospital intended to turn off life support systems in favor of "palliative" care designed to ease any pain the baby might be experiencing. But the case took a surprise turn when researchers at the Vatican's children's hospital, which has offered to treat Charlie, said new information suggested that the experimental treatment sought by the parents might be effective.

That prompted the hospital to seek another High Court ruling. A hearing where the new medical information is likely to be examined is expected to take place Monday. Clinicians from the Vatican's Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital's neurosciences department said tests in mice and patients with a similar, but not identical, genetic condition as Charlie had shown significant improvement is possible. At present, the boy isn't able to breathe unaided. He has a rare inherited mitochondrial disease that has affected many of his vital organs and left him with brain damage.

An online campaign to send Charlie to the U.S. for treatment has raised more than 1.3 million pounds ($1.7 million). A U.S. hospital has offered to ship the drug needed for the therapy to Britain for Charlie. Unless the next hearing produces a change, previous court decisions bar the hospital from allowing Charlie to be taken elsewhere for treatment. Britain's government won't play a role in deciding the future course of Charlie's treatment, an official said Sunday. Justice Secretary David Lidington said the decision will be made by judges acting "independently and dispassionately" based on the facts of the case.

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment

Personally, I'm still flabbergasted that anyone thinks there NEEDS to be any sort of hearing about whether or not parents can or should make decisions about what's best for their children. Thank God I live in a country that at least pays lip service to the fact that my children are MY children, not the government's.

... unless, of course, you have abdicated your responsibility for your child's medical decisions to the State.

Exactly the point. We are seeing, played out in real time, precisely what we on the American right have been objecting to about Obamacare and the left's push to socialize medicine: In a socialized utopia such as they envision, all people are wards of the state. They belong to the State, their children belong to the State, their lives belong to the State, and ultimately, it is the State that decides who lives and dies, according to the State's priorities, rather than the individual's.

Remember how the left derided any talk of "death panels" back when Obamacare was first being discussed? How silly it was to even suggest that such a thing would exist? Well, we've just seen a death panel rule on Charlie Gard, and now we're supposed to cheer because ANOTHER death panel has "compassionately" decided to weigh in. And the real question is the one that never enters the thick, rock-lined skulls of the left: what business does ANYONE other than the parents have thinking they have a say in this?

 

[Cecilie1200]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Oh? Then, why don't you just tell us exactly what it IS all about?

Why not just read it? Read the other link I gave and then this one.
Great Ormond Street Hospital v Yates & Ors [2017] EWHC 972 (Fam) (11 April 2017)

Maybe YOU should read it .... particularly paragraphs 14 thru 19.

Sadly, the child has a very small chance of recovery. We accept that as a reality ... but that doesn't mean that the parents shouldn't be allowed to exercise every avenue available to them. To deny them - the parents - of their rights, prerogatives, and alternatives, is as devastating as the illness to their child. Can you imagine sitting around the house for the next 40 years and saying, "We didn't do all we could for Charlie. The government wouldn't let us. They took our child away so they could kill it."

Parents can eventually accept the death of a child - they find comfort in the recognition that it was God's choice. Parents can't accept that some other person, some other government agency, can cause the death of their child.

A father and mother will go to the end of the world - explore any possibility - for a miracle that might save their child. I know. I did it. My miracle didn't work - but I take comfort knowing that I did everything I could for Michael. I can tell you, with all honest sincerity, losing a child is horrific. If somebody were to take my child from me, if somebody were to try to prevent me from trying every possible avenue for my child, I would hunt him to the ends of the earth. There would be no forgiveness.

Is it now more about the parents than about Charlie? Possibly. But, how can you, with any certitude, simply say that Charlie has to die, that Charlie has to be denied even the slimmest, most remote, possibility of recovery? How can you be so cold and so callous to allow another human being to judge when your child should die?

Is it about socialized medicine? You damned right it is. The government has usurped the rights of the parents. They have made themselves judge, jury, AND executioner. They have placed themselves above God.

Anyone who is yabbling on about "Well, he has a very small chance of recovery, so . . ." is both stupid and evil, because they have neither the brains nor the morals to grasp this central fact: Good people do not accept anyone telling a parent they must sit idle and watch their child die as anything but EVIL. Going to Hell, supping with the Devil-type evil. It is the imperative of a parent, on biological, emotional, and moral levels, to fight for their children to their last breath. This is why THEY, and not "compassionate" leftist dipwads or "Human Rights Courts" - which I still maintain is a whopping oxymoron - are and should be the final arbiters of what's best for the child.

 

[Cecilie1200]

You are an idiot. The child is in constant pain and the hospital and the courts have taken a difficult decision in his best interests.
Its worth noting that he would not have lived this long in the backward US.

1) Anyone who thinks the courts have his best interests in mind more than the parents has no business calling anyone else an idiot. Let me ask you, when you're not being a smug, condescending bastard making pronouncements about strangers' lives from the comfort of your armchair, who do YOU trust with YOUR life? Do you have a living will stating that you're sure the courts will make the best decision for you, or are your family and loved ones going to make end-of-life decisions for you?

2) It's not "worth noting" anything that spews from your piehole, particularly when I see no proof from you that he would not have lived this long "in the backward US". Put up or shut up. Also, if the US is so "backward", why is it that WE are the ones who have the experimental treatments available for his illness, and the "enlightened" nations of the oxymoronically-named Human Rights Court don't?

So try engaging your brain and addressing these questions, if you can schedule some time in amongst your self-congratulatory "It's leftist, so it MUST be best" attitude problems.

If there was a chance of any sort that this treatment would help him then his Doctors would send him there. After all its not going to cost them anything. In fact that would have been the easy option for them because they could have passed the buck.

But they stuck up for him and are enduring a load of senseless abuse because of it. The OP is making a political case out of a tragedy and it makes me nauseous.

Perhaps you could also point me to the insurance companies that cover this type of illness and I will withdraw my remarks about Americas backward health system.

Once again, you blithely inform us that the doctors know everything, their motives are unimpeachable, and the final decision should be theirs. You have yet to explain to us WHY any of that should be assumed.

Try to wrap your brain around this: at its core, the decision ISN'T THEIRS TO MAKE. He's not the doctors' child. He's not the oxymoronic Human Rights Court's child. At the point where you decided that all knowledge and wisdom should be ascribed to government bureaucracies (of which the doctors in the UK are definitely cogs), you were egregiously, heinously wrong, and everything that spewed forth from that evil assumption had no hope of being anything but shockingly wrong.

What's nauseating is that you believe anyone except European leftists and evil they - and you - propound turned a tragedy into a political case. Why are you so simpleminded that you can't understand that it became political way back when the UK decided to adopt a healthcare system that allows the decisions of people other than the patient and their loved ones to supersede all else?

Perhaps you could point me to where the parents asked for insurance companies or anyone else to cover this. I realize that you're such a helpless, mindless child that you can't conceive of a world where you deal with your own fucking problems rather than sitting on your ass, begging someone else to take care of you, but - radical notion incoming! - it is possible for people to do for themselves, as witness the fact that Charlie Gard's parents raised the money to get him the treatment independently, and ask for nothing but the parental rights Americans take for granted - and dimwits like you frantically try to throw away with both hands as though it's repugnant - to take their child where they want and get him treatment as they think best.

And I still await the answers to the questions you utterly ignored, one assumes because you're too much of a hypocritical poltroon to face them: Do YOU have a living will designating the all-wise and all-compassionate government to make decisions regarding YOUR life, or will your family and loved ones be doing it? Have you put YOUR life and well-being where your fat, evil-spewing mouth is?

The longer you avoid answering this, the more I must assume that you've adopted "Good for thee, but not me" attitude to this question.

Very well said.
But Tommy is a commie who's already stated that the children of right wing people should be removed and the parents locked in zoos, so I guess removing parental rights and handing them over to the state is no biggie to him. Personally I think it's disgraceful to prevent the parents from pursuing every opportunity. Even though the chance the child will be cured is remote, they need to be allowed to know they did ALL they could, imho.

Yes, well, Tommy should keep in mind that I think the most compassionate decision for him would be immediate euthanasia, since it is my determination that having to wake up every day and be him is intolerable suffering to which he should not be subjected. And he should be damned glad that I'm not a Human Rights Court.

Tommy and his ilk are the Nazis, the antebellum slavers, the Roman Empire with its Coliseum and its salt mines - anyone in human history who has ever felt hubristic enough to decide that someone else's life is worthless according to their personal judgements. They are worse than serial killers like Ted Bundy or Ed Gein, because they aren't even energetic enough to do their own wetwork.

 

[Coyote]

Charlie Gard case to be given another hearing...

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment
Monday 10th July, 2017 — The British parents of a terminally ill baby, facing another court hearing on his condition and care, said Sunday they are hopeful he will receive the experimental treatment that previous rulings have prevented.

"If he's still fighting, we're still fighting," said Connie Yates, the mother of 11-month-old Charlie Gard. Yates and Charlie's father, Chris Gard, spoke outside London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, where the baby is in intensive care and on life support. The baby's parents have received support from Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump, but Charlie's future remains in the hands of British courts charged with determining what is best for him. "He's our son, he's our flesh and blood. We feel that it should be our right as parents to decide to give him a chance at life," Yates, carrying a petition signed by some 350,000 people supporting the couple's quest, said. "There is nothing to lose, he deserves a chance."

The complex case appeared to have reached its end last month, when the European Court of Human Rights refused to overturn British court rulings barring Charlie from traveling to the United States for treatment. The hospital intended to turn off life support systems in favor of "palliative" care designed to ease any pain the baby might be experiencing. But the case took a surprise turn when researchers at the Vatican's children's hospital, which has offered to treat Charlie, said new information suggested that the experimental treatment sought by the parents might be effective.

That prompted the hospital to seek another High Court ruling. A hearing where the new medical information is likely to be examined is expected to take place Monday. Clinicians from the Vatican's Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital's neurosciences department said tests in mice and patients with a similar, but not identical, genetic condition as Charlie had shown significant improvement is possible. At present, the boy isn't able to breathe unaided. He has a rare inherited mitochondrial disease that has affected many of his vital organs and left him with brain damage.

An online campaign to send Charlie to the U.S. for treatment has raised more than 1.3 million pounds ($1.7 million). A U.S. hospital has offered to ship the drug needed for the therapy to Britain for Charlie. Unless the next hearing produces a change, previous court decisions bar the hospital from allowing Charlie to be taken elsewhere for treatment. Britain's government won't play a role in deciding the future course of Charlie's treatment, an official said Sunday. Justice Secretary David Lidington said the decision will be made by judges acting "independently and dispassionately" based on the facts of the case.

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment

Personally, I'm still flabbergasted that anyone thinks there NEEDS to be any sort of hearing about whether or not parents can or should make decisions about what's best for their children. Thank God I live in a country that at least pays lip service to the fact that my children are MY children, not the government's.

... unless, of course, you have abdicated your responsibility for your child's medical decisions to the State.

Exactly the point. We are seeing, played out in real time, precisely what we on the American right have been objecting to about Obamacare and the left's push to socialize medicine: In a socialized utopia such as they envision, all people are wards of the state. They belong to the State, their children belong to the State, their lives belong to the State, and ultimately, it is the State that decides who lives and dies, according to the State's priorities, rather than the individual's.

Remember how the left derided any talk of "death panels" back when Obamacare was first being discussed? How silly it was to even suggest that such a thing would exist? Well, we've just seen a death panel rule on Charlie Gard, and now we're supposed to cheer because ANOTHER death panel has "compassionately" decided to weigh in. And the real question is the one that never enters the thick, rock-lined skulls of the left: what business does ANYONE other than the parents have thinking they have a say in this?

It has NOTHING to do with socialized medicine - that is what the "thick rock lined skulls" of the right don't get....even in countries with socialized medicine those who can afford it can get treatment outside the system easily. In fact, you can argue that we already have "death panels" when people who can't afford insurance or healthcare can't get care and die.

What is - it comes down to one thing: a British law that states the welfare of the child must be considered and are paramount even over the parents rights.

I can see the pros and cons of such a law, but I'd be curious as to what led it to being inacted. We've certainly had many cases where the rights of a parent have led to de-facto child abuse that is too often overlooked.

 

[danielpalos]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

If they have money, why are they not going to some other country where they may specialize in that treatment?

Otherwise, how is "government controlled healthcare" worse than Third World health care?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Charlie Gard case to be given another hearing...

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment
Monday 10th July, 2017 — The British parents of a terminally ill baby, facing another court hearing on his condition and care, said Sunday they are hopeful he will receive the experimental treatment that previous rulings have prevented.

"If he's still fighting, we're still fighting," said Connie Yates, the mother of 11-month-old Charlie Gard. Yates and Charlie's father, Chris Gard, spoke outside London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, where the baby is in intensive care and on life support. The baby's parents have received support from Pope Francis and U.S. President Donald Trump, but Charlie's future remains in the hands of British courts charged with determining what is best for him. "He's our son, he's our flesh and blood. We feel that it should be our right as parents to decide to give him a chance at life," Yates, carrying a petition signed by some 350,000 people supporting the couple's quest, said. "There is nothing to lose, he deserves a chance."

The complex case appeared to have reached its end last month, when the European Court of Human Rights refused to overturn British court rulings barring Charlie from traveling to the United States for treatment. The hospital intended to turn off life support systems in favor of "palliative" care designed to ease any pain the baby might be experiencing. But the case took a surprise turn when researchers at the Vatican's children's hospital, which has offered to treat Charlie, said new information suggested that the experimental treatment sought by the parents might be effective.

That prompted the hospital to seek another High Court ruling. A hearing where the new medical information is likely to be examined is expected to take place Monday. Clinicians from the Vatican's Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital's neurosciences department said tests in mice and patients with a similar, but not identical, genetic condition as Charlie had shown significant improvement is possible. At present, the boy isn't able to breathe unaided. He has a rare inherited mitochondrial disease that has affected many of his vital organs and left him with brain damage.

An online campaign to send Charlie to the U.S. for treatment has raised more than 1.3 million pounds ($1.7 million). A U.S. hospital has offered to ship the drug needed for the therapy to Britain for Charlie. Unless the next hearing produces a change, previous court decisions bar the hospital from allowing Charlie to be taken elsewhere for treatment. Britain's government won't play a role in deciding the future course of Charlie's treatment, an official said Sunday. Justice Secretary David Lidington said the decision will be made by judges acting "independently and dispassionately" based on the facts of the case.

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment

Personally, I'm still flabbergasted that anyone thinks there NEEDS to be any sort of hearing about whether or not parents can or should make decisions about what's best for their children. Thank God I live in a country that at least pays lip service to the fact that my children are MY children, not the government's.

... unless, of course, you have abdicated your responsibility for your child's medical decisions to the State.

Exactly the point. We are seeing, played out in real time, precisely what we on the American right have been objecting to about Obamacare and the left's push to socialize medicine: In a socialized utopia such as they envision, all people are wards of the state. They belong to the State, their children belong to the State, their lives belong to the State, and ultimately, it is the State that decides who lives and dies, according to the State's priorities, rather than the individual's.

Remember how the left derided any talk of "death panels" back when Obamacare was first being discussed? How silly it was to even suggest that such a thing would exist? Well, we've just seen a death panel rule on Charlie Gard, and now we're supposed to cheer because ANOTHER death panel has "compassionately" decided to weigh in. And the real question is the one that never enters the thick, rock-lined skulls of the left: what business does ANYONE other than the parents have thinking they have a say in this?

It has NOTHING to do with socialized medicine - that is what the "thick rock lined skulls" of the right don't get....even in countries with socialized medicine those who can afford it can get treatment outside the system easily. In fact, you can argue that we already have "death panels" when people who can't afford insurance or healthcare can't get care and die.

What is - it comes down to one thing: a British law that states the welfare of the child must be considered and are paramount even over the parents rights.

I can see the pros and cons of such a law, but I'd be curious as to what led it to being inacted. We've certainly had many cases where the rights of a parent have led to de-facto child abuse that is too often overlooked.

It has nothing to do with socialized medicine? Well, nothing except for the fact that the UK has a socialized medical system, and we now see government agencies taking upon themselves the right of decisions of life and death, to the point of actually ordering that the parents cannot take physical custody of their own child and cannot make medical decisions for that child using their own money. You know, other than that, you're absolutely right that it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

Or, to put it another way, you'd be a genius if you weren't so frigging stupid.

People in countries with socialized medicine can get treatment outside the system easily? Really? How easy are the Gards finding it?

A death panel is not people being unable to afford what they want or need. That, unfortunately, happens everywhere in the world at some point, and always has. It is a specific group of people - y'know, like a "Human Rights Court" - with government aegis handing down decisions about a person's life or death from which that person has no recourse. I would admire your effort to twist yourself into a pretzel to make it appear that those defending the UK's egregious right to sentence a child to death and force the parents to watch helplessly as the good people they manifestly are not and the people clamoring for the parents to have the right to try to save their own child as "eeeevil", if it wasn't so pathetically inept and repugnant.

It comes down to one thing: British law states that the government decides what the welfare of the child isn't, up to and including deciding that DYING while their parents are forced to watch is in their best interest. Plug your brain in, if you can find it, and ruminate on that.

I'm not curious what led to that law being enacted. I already know. It was a belief that trading freedom for safety was a good idea, and the best way to acquire that safety was to turn to government for everything, and make all citizens wards of the state. And as Ben Franklin observed, people who make that Devil's bargain deserve neither safety nor freedom, and will lose both. Exhibit A: Charlie Gard.

Finally, there's a big difference between the government - usually local government, not national - stepping between a child and abusive parents, and a government summarily nullifying all parental rights of all parents, as we can see the UK has clearly done.

 

[Coyote]

Charlie Gard case to be given another hearing...

Parents still fighting for Charlie Gard's treatment
Monday 10th July, 2017 — The British parents of a terminally ill baby, facing another court hearing on his condition and care, said Sunday they are hopeful he will receive the experimental treatment that previous rulings have prevented.

Personally, I'm still flabbergasted that anyone thinks there NEEDS to be any sort of hearing about whether or not parents can or should make decisions about what's best for their children. Thank God I live in a country that at least pays lip service to the fact that my children are MY children, not the government's.

... unless, of course, you have abdicated your responsibility for your child's medical decisions to the State.

Exactly the point. We are seeing, played out in real time, precisely what we on the American right have been objecting to about Obamacare and the left's push to socialize medicine: In a socialized utopia such as they envision, all people are wards of the state. They belong to the State, their children belong to the State, their lives belong to the State, and ultimately, it is the State that decides who lives and dies, according to the State's priorities, rather than the individual's.

Remember how the left derided any talk of "death panels" back when Obamacare was first being discussed? How silly it was to even suggest that such a thing would exist? Well, we've just seen a death panel rule on Charlie Gard, and now we're supposed to cheer because ANOTHER death panel has "compassionately" decided to weigh in. And the real question is the one that never enters the thick, rock-lined skulls of the left: what business does ANYONE other than the parents have thinking they have a say in this?

It has NOTHING to do with socialized medicine - that is what the "thick rock lined skulls" of the right don't get....even in countries with socialized medicine those who can afford it can get treatment outside the system easily. In fact, you can argue that we already have "death panels" when people who can't afford insurance or healthcare can't get care and die.

What is - it comes down to one thing: a British law that states the welfare of the child must be considered and are paramount even over the parents rights.

I can see the pros and cons of such a law, but I'd be curious as to what led it to being inacted. We've certainly had many cases where the rights of a parent have led to de-facto child abuse that is too often overlooked.

It has nothing to do with socialized medicine? Well, nothing except for the fact that the UK has a socialized medical system, and we now see government agencies taking upon themselves the right of decisions of life and death, to the point of actually ordering that the parents cannot take physical custody of their own child and cannot make medical decisions for that child using their own money. You know, other than that, you're absolutely right that it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

No, it has nothing to do with socialized medicine. All socialized medicine does is provide a single payer system where the payer is the government. That is all.

This involves a child welfare law in Britain.

Or, to put it another way, you'd be a genius if you weren't so frigging stupid.

Your not too impressive either.

People in countries with socialized medicine can get treatment outside the system easily? Really? How easy are the Gards finding it?

To repeat. It's not about socialized medicine. It's about a law that when there is a dispute between parents and doctors the childs best interests must be paramount.

A death panel is not people being unable to afford what they want or need. That, unfortunately, happens everywhere in the world at some point, and always has. It is a specific group of people - y'know, like a "Human Rights Court" - with government aegis handing down decisions about a person's life or death from which that person has no recourse. I would admire your effort to twist yourself into a pretzel to make it appear that those defending the UK's egregious right to sentence a child to death and force the parents to watch helplessly as the good people they manifestly are not and the people clamoring for the parents to have the right to try to save their own child as "eeeevil", if it wasn't so pathetically inept and repugnant.

If that is how you define a "death panel" then none such exists either under the ACA or in Britain, where anyone who has the money can seek outside-the-system care.

Speaking of pathetic and repugnant...what do you think of children allowed to suffer and die in the name of the parent's right to refuse medical care in the name of religion? (as in the link I provided). Should parents be allowed to to do that or should there be some law protecting the child?

It comes down to one thing: British law states that the government decides what the welfare of the child isn't, up to and including deciding that DYING while their parents are forced to watch is in their best interest. Plug your brain in, if you can find it, and ruminate on that.

See above question.

I'm not curious what led to that law being enacted. I already know. It was a belief that trading freedom for safety was a good idea, and the best way to acquire that safety was to turn to government for everything, and make all citizens wards of the state. And as Ben Franklin observed, people who make that Devil's bargain deserve neither safety nor freedom, and will lose both. Exhibit A: Charlie Gard.

Ok, you don't have a clue.

Finally, there's a big difference between the government - usually local government, not national - stepping between a child and abusive parents, and a government summarily nullifying all parental rights of all parents, as we can see the UK has clearly done.

Exactly what difference? For example what's the difference between parents prolonging a terminally ill child's suffering, when medical advice is against it...or parents opting to treat their child's terminal tumor with faith healing?

 

[Coyote]

... unless, of course, you have abdicated your responsibility for your child's medical decisions to the State.

Exactly the point. We are seeing, played out in real time, precisely what we on the American right have been objecting to about Obamacare and the left's push to socialize medicine: In a socialized utopia such as they envision, all people are wards of the state. They belong to the State, their children belong to the State, their lives belong to the State, and ultimately, it is the State that decides who lives and dies, according to the State's priorities, rather than the individual's.

Remember how the left derided any talk of "death panels" back when Obamacare was first being discussed? How silly it was to even suggest that such a thing would exist? Well, we've just seen a death panel rule on Charlie Gard, and now we're supposed to cheer because ANOTHER death panel has "compassionately" decided to weigh in. And the real question is the one that never enters the thick, rock-lined skulls of the left: what business does ANYONE other than the parents have thinking they have a say in this?

It has NOTHING to do with socialized medicine - that is what the "thick rock lined skulls" of the right don't get....even in countries with socialized medicine those who can afford it can get treatment outside the system easily. In fact, you can argue that we already have "death panels" when people who can't afford insurance or healthcare can't get care and die.

What is - it comes down to one thing: a British law that states the welfare of the child must be considered and are paramount even over the parents rights.

I can see the pros and cons of such a law, but I'd be curious as to what led it to being inacted. We've certainly had many cases where the rights of a parent have led to de-facto child abuse that is too often overlooked.

It has nothing to do with socialized medicine? Well, nothing except for the fact that the UK has a socialized medical system, and we now see government agencies taking upon themselves the right of decisions of life and death, to the point of actually ordering that the parents cannot take physical custody of their own child and cannot make medical decisions for that child using their own money. You know, other than that, you're absolutely right that it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

No, it has nothing to do with socialized medicine. All socialized medicine does is provide a single payer system where the payer is the government. That is all.

This involves a child welfare law in Britain.

All it does? All?! Well, I'd say that "all" is more than enough for anyone with at least two brain cells in the same area of their skull who therefore knows that he who pays the money holds the power.

Let me tell you about socialism, Public School Einstein, and something about life. REAL life, not that misty, airy-fairy leftist utopia you prance around in your head.

First of all, have you ever heard the modified Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules? I know it was quoted in "Aladdin", and I would think animated Disney movies would be just your speed.

This is usually said as a joke, but it's an edgy joke which, like any effective humor, is rooted in truth. A related saying is the hoary cliche "The customer is always right". Both of these are hard, cold facts of the world. The person or entity coughing up the folding green is the one calling the shots.

I get that you don't like this. I get that you're horrified by the idea that money talks, and you want desperately to believe that we can somehow create a world where that isn't so. Doesn't matter. It's still reality, and always will be.

So if "all" you're doing is making the government the absolute, sole source of cash in the medical field, then "all" you're doing is making THE GOVERNMENT the customer, the one with the gold who makes the rules.

Now take five seconds to stop bleating, "But the government CARES about me!" and look at the actual facts spreading themselves in front of your oblivious eyes in all their repulsive glory. However much you want to believe that giving the government the power of the purse over your health, welfare, and very life is no big deal, just a funneling of money into your pockets to do with as you please, the reality shown by the Charlie Gard case is that it IS, in truth, making yourself a helpless possession of a bureaucracy, subject to ITS wishes, ITS priorities.

I understand that freedom and personal responsibility are hard and scary. I get that earning your own money, paying and keeping track of your own bills, having to bear the consequences of your decisions and your failures, are enough to make weak people want to retreat to childhood, where the grownups handle all that stuff and you just get to romp and play with nary a negative thought intruding on the fluffy, sparkly clouds of your fantasies.

But the seamy underbelly to that is that a bureaucracy, by definition, cannot care about you or anyone. Reducing humans to possessions is inherently, innately evil. And decisions of life and death should never be made by people who've never met the victim, will not be affected in the slightest by his death, and will likely not even remember his name a year from now.

And finally, despite your frantic attempts to shift the blame for this from government control of health care to some amorphous, unnamed "child welfare law", the fact is that in the United States, which still clings to some vestiges of the consumer also being the customer, child welfare laws still aim at protecting and preserving the lives of children, rather than turning themselves on the head to champion death as "the greater good". Why do you suppose that is?

Or, to put it another way, you'd be a genius if you weren't so frigging stupid.

Your not too impressive either.

Yes, I am.

People in countries with socialized medicine can get outside the system easily? Really? How easy are the Gards finding it?

To repeat. It's not about socialized medicine. It's about a law that when there is a dispute between parents and doctors the childs best interests must be paramount.

To repeat. Socialism is the reason why the government would believe it has, or should have, the right to supersede perfectly good parents in the first place. Face it, skid mark. You cannot and will not escape the fact that your putrid worldview and aspirations for society are at fault here, and the true, noxious evil of what you want and what you are is on full display to the world.

By the way, please don't think you slipped your chickenshit unwillingness to avoid answering the question past me. You can't fool us about what's at work here, you can't fool us about your complicity, and you can't fool us about your cowardice. You're batting zero, Chuckles. Now get on answering that question, or admit that you can't, because you know you're wrong and evil, and you don't care.

A death panel is not people being unable to afford what they want or need. That, unfortunately, happens everywhere in the world at some point, and always has. It is a specific group of people - y'know, like a "Human Rights Court" - with government aegis handing down decisions about a person's life or death from which that person has no recourse. I would admire your effort to twist yourself into a pretzel to make it appear that those defending the UK's egregious right to sentence a child to death and force the parents to watch helplessly as the good people they manifestly are not and the people clamoring for the parents to have the right to try to save their own child as "eeeevil", if it wasn't so pathetically inept and repugnant.

If that is how you define a "death panel" then none such exists either under the ACA or in Britain, where anyone who has the money can seek outside-the-system care.

Three words for you, Delusion Boy: Human Rights Court. Clearly, anyone who has the money CAN'T seek outside-the-system care, or we wouldn't even be having this discussion, would we? If your stubborn, oft-repeated lie were true, the Gards would already be in the US, getting the treatment they want. But since they aren't, you either have a 1-digit IQ, or you're a lying sack of shit, or you're well past the point of hallucination that you should be institutionalized for your safety and that of others. Which one would you prefer we believe?

None of that has anything to do with the Charlie Gard case. So go plug in your two functioning brain cells, I think they've run out of juice.

 

[Spare_change]

Exactly the point. We are seeing, played out in real time, precisely what we on the American right have been objecting to about Obamacare and the left's push to socialize medicine: In a socialized utopia such as they envision, all people are wards of the state. They belong to the State, their children belong to the State, their lives belong to the State, and ultimately, it is the State that decides who lives and dies, according to the State's priorities, rather than the individual's.

Remember how the left derided any talk of "death panels" back when Obamacare was first being discussed? How silly it was to even suggest that such a thing would exist? Well, we've just seen a death panel rule on Charlie Gard, and now we're supposed to cheer because ANOTHER death panel has "compassionately" decided to weigh in. And the real question is the one that never enters the thick, rock-lined skulls of the left: what business does ANYONE other than the parents have thinking they have a say in this?

It has NOTHING to do with socialized medicine - that is what the "thick rock lined skulls" of the right don't get....even in countries with socialized medicine those who can afford it can get treatment outside the system easily. In fact, you can argue that we already have "death panels" when people who can't afford insurance or healthcare can't get care and die.

What is - it comes down to one thing: a British law that states the welfare of the child must be considered and are paramount even over the parents rights.

I can see the pros and cons of such a law, but I'd be curious as to what led it to being inacted. We've certainly had many cases where the rights of a parent have led to de-facto child abuse that is too often overlooked.

It has nothing to do with socialized medicine? Well, nothing except for the fact that the UK has a socialized medical system, and we now see government agencies taking upon themselves the right of decisions of life and death, to the point of actually ordering that the parents cannot take physical custody of their own child and cannot make medical decisions for that child using their own money. You know, other than that, you're absolutely right that it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

No, it has nothing to do with socialized medicine. All socialized medicine does is provide a single payer system where the payer is the government. That is all.

This involves a child welfare law in Britain.

All it does? All?! Well, I'd say that "all" is more than enough for anyone with at least two brain cells in the same area of their skull who therefore knows that he who pays the money holds the power.

Let me tell you about socialism, Public School Einstein, and something about life. REAL life, not that misty, airy-fairy leftist utopia you prance around in your head.

First of all, have you ever heard the modified Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules? I know it was quoted in "Aladdin", and I would think animated Disney movies would be just your speed.

This is usually said as a joke, but it's an edgy joke which, like any effective humor, is rooted in truth. A related saying is the hoary cliche "The customer is always right". Both of these are hard, cold facts of the world. The person or entity coughing up the folding green is the one calling the shots.

I get that you don't like this. I get that you're horrified by the idea that money talks, and you want desperately to believe that we can somehow create a world where that isn't so. Doesn't matter. It's still reality, and always will be.

So if "all" you're doing is making the government the absolute, sole source of cash in the medical field, then "all" you're doing is making THE GOVERNMENT the customer, the one with the gold who makes the rules.

Now take five seconds to stop bleating, "But the government CARES about me!" and look at the actual facts spreading themselves in front of your oblivious eyes in all their repulsive glory. However much you want to believe that giving the government the power of the purse over your health, welfare, and very life is no big deal, just a funneling of money into your pockets to do with as you please, the reality shown by the Charlie Gard case is that it IS, in truth, making yourself a helpless possession of a bureaucracy, subject to ITS wishes, ITS priorities.

I understand that freedom and personal responsibility are hard and scary. I get that earning your own money, paying and keeping track of your own bills, having to bear the consequences of your decisions and your failures, are enough to make weak people want to retreat to childhood, where the grownups handle all that stuff and you just get to romp and play with nary a negative thought intruding on the fluffy, sparkly clouds of your fantasies.

But the seamy underbelly to that is that a bureaucracy, by definition, cannot care about you or anyone. Reducing humans to possessions is inherently, innately evil. And decisions of life and death should never be made by people who've never met the victim, will not be affected in the slightest by his death, and will likely not even remember his name a year from now.

And finally, despite your frantic attempts to shift the blame for this from government control of health care to some amorphous, unnamed "child welfare law", the fact is that in the United States, which still clings to some vestiges of the consumer also being the customer, child welfare laws still aim at protecting and preserving the lives of children, rather than turning themselves on the head to champion death as "the greater good". Why do you suppose that is?

Or, to put it another way, you'd be a genius if you weren't so frigging stupid.

Your not too impressive either.

Yes, I am.

People in countries with socialized medicine can get outside the system easily? Really? How easy are the Gards finding it?

To repeat. It's not about socialized medicine. It's about a law that when there is a dispute between parents and doctors the childs best interests must be paramount.

To repeat. Socialism is the reason why the government would believe it has, or should have, the right to supersede perfectly good parents in the first place. Face it, skid mark. You cannot and will not escape the fact that your putrid worldview and aspirations for society are at fault here, and the true, noxious evil of what you want and what you are is on full display to the world.

By the way, please don't think you slipped your chickenshit unwillingness to avoid answering the question past me. You can't fool us about what's at work here, you can't fool us about your complicity, and you can't fool us about your cowardice. You're batting zero, Chuckles. Now get on answering that question, or admit that you can't, because you know you're wrong and evil, and you don't care.

If that is how you define a "death panel" then none such exists either under the ACA or in Britain, where anyone who has the money can seek outside-the-system care.

None of that has anything to do with the Charlie Gard case. So go plug in your two functioning brain cells, I think they've run out of juice.

Personal attacks instead of intelligent discussion?

Interesting.

 

[Coyote]

It has NOTHING to do with socialized medicine - that is what the "thick rock lined skulls" of the right don't get....even in countries with socialized medicine those who can afford it can get treatment outside the system easily. In fact, you can argue that we already have "death panels" when people who can't afford insurance or healthcare can't get care and die.

What is - it comes down to one thing: a British law that states the welfare of the child must be considered and are paramount even over the parents rights.

I can see the pros and cons of such a law, but I'd be curious as to what led it to being inacted. We've certainly had many cases where the rights of a parent have led to de-facto child abuse that is too often overlooked.

It has nothing to do with socialized medicine? Well, nothing except for the fact that the UK has a socialized medical system, and we now see government agencies taking upon themselves the right of decisions of life and death, to the point of actually ordering that the parents cannot take physical custody of their own child and cannot make medical decisions for that child using their own money. You know, other than that, you're absolutely right that it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

No, it has nothing to do with socialized medicine. All socialized medicine does is provide a single payer system where the payer is the government. That is all.

This involves a child welfare law in Britain.

All it does? All?! Well, I'd say that "all" is more than enough for anyone with at least two brain cells in the same area of their skull who therefore knows that he who pays the money holds the power.

Let me tell you about socialism, Public School Einstein, and something about life. REAL life, not that misty, airy-fairy leftist utopia you prance around in your head.

First of all, have you ever heard the modified Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules? I know it was quoted in "Aladdin", and I would think animated Disney movies would be just your speed.

This is usually said as a joke, but it's an edgy joke which, like any effective humor, is rooted in truth. A related saying is the hoary cliche "The customer is always right". Both of these are hard, cold facts of the world. The person or entity coughing up the folding green is the one calling the shots.

I get that you don't like this. I get that you're horrified by the idea that money talks, and you want desperately to believe that we can somehow create a world where that isn't so. Doesn't matter. It's still reality, and always will be.

So if "all" you're doing is making the government the absolute, sole source of cash in the medical field, then "all" you're doing is making THE GOVERNMENT the customer, the one with the gold who makes the rules.

Now take five seconds to stop bleating, "But the government CARES about me!" and look at the actual facts spreading themselves in front of your oblivious eyes in all their repulsive glory. However much you want to believe that giving the government the power of the purse over your health, welfare, and very life is no big deal, just a funneling of money into your pockets to do with as you please, the reality shown by the Charlie Gard case is that it IS, in truth, making yourself a helpless possession of a bureaucracy, subject to ITS wishes, ITS priorities.

I understand that freedom and personal responsibility are hard and scary. I get that earning your own money, paying and keeping track of your own bills, having to bear the consequences of your decisions and your failures, are enough to make weak people want to retreat to childhood, where the grownups handle all that stuff and you just get to romp and play with nary a negative thought intruding on the fluffy, sparkly clouds of your fantasies.

But the seamy underbelly to that is that a bureaucracy, by definition, cannot care about you or anyone. Reducing humans to possessions is inherently, innately evil. And decisions of life and death should never be made by people who've never met the victim, will not be affected in the slightest by his death, and will likely not even remember his name a year from now.

And finally, despite your frantic attempts to shift the blame for this from government control of health care to some amorphous, unnamed "child welfare law", the fact is that in the United States, which still clings to some vestiges of the consumer also being the customer, child welfare laws still aim at protecting and preserving the lives of children, rather than turning themselves on the head to champion death as "the greater good". Why do you suppose that is?

Or, to put it another way, you'd be a genius if you weren't so frigging stupid.

Your not too impressive either.

Yes, I am.

People in countries with socialized medicine can get outside the system easily? Really? How easy are the Gards finding it?

To repeat. It's not about socialized medicine. It's about a law that when there is a dispute between parents and doctors the childs best interests must be paramount.

To repeat. Socialism is the reason why the government would believe it has, or should have, the right to supersede perfectly good parents in the first place. Face it, skid mark. You cannot and will not escape the fact that your putrid worldview and aspirations for society are at fault here, and the true, noxious evil of what you want and what you are is on full display to the world.

By the way, please don't think you slipped your chickenshit unwillingness to avoid answering the question past me. You can't fool us about what's at work here, you can't fool us about your complicity, and you can't fool us about your cowardice. You're batting zero, Chuckles. Now get on answering that question, or admit that you can't, because you know you're wrong and evil, and you don't care.

None of that has anything to do with the Charlie Gard case. So go plug in your two functioning brain cells, I think they've run out of juice.

Personal attacks instead of intelligent discussion?

Interesting.

You might want to READ the post I was RESPONDING to...before issuing your judgement.

Then again. Maybe not.

Interesting.

 

[jillian]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

so is it better when an insurance conglomerate with a profit motive refuses to pay for care ... just because"?

dumbass

 

[Spare_change]

It has nothing to do with socialized medicine? Well, nothing except for the fact that the UK has a socialized medical system, and we now see government agencies taking upon themselves the right of decisions of life and death, to the point of actually ordering that the parents cannot take physical custody of their own child and cannot make medical decisions for that child using their own money. You know, other than that, you're absolutely right that it has nothing to do with socialized medicine.

No, it has nothing to do with socialized medicine. All socialized medicine does is provide a single payer system where the payer is the government. That is all.

This involves a child welfare law in Britain.

All it does? All?! Well, I'd say that "all" is more than enough for anyone with at least two brain cells in the same area of their skull who therefore knows that he who pays the money holds the power.

Let me tell you about socialism, Public School Einstein, and something about life. REAL life, not that misty, airy-fairy leftist utopia you prance around in your head.

First of all, have you ever heard the modified Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules? I know it was quoted in "Aladdin", and I would think animated Disney movies would be just your speed.

This is usually said as a joke, but it's an edgy joke which, like any effective humor, is rooted in truth. A related saying is the hoary cliche "The customer is always right". Both of these are hard, cold facts of the world. The person or entity coughing up the folding green is the one calling the shots.

I get that you don't like this. I get that you're horrified by the idea that money talks, and you want desperately to believe that we can somehow create a world where that isn't so. Doesn't matter. It's still reality, and always will be.

So if "all" you're doing is making the government the absolute, sole source of cash in the medical field, then "all" you're doing is making THE GOVERNMENT the customer, the one with the gold who makes the rules.

Now take five seconds to stop bleating, "But the government CARES about me!" and look at the actual facts spreading themselves in front of your oblivious eyes in all their repulsive glory. However much you want to believe that giving the government the power of the purse over your health, welfare, and very life is no big deal, just a funneling of money into your pockets to do with as you please, the reality shown by the Charlie Gard case is that it IS, in truth, making yourself a helpless possession of a bureaucracy, subject to ITS wishes, ITS priorities.

I understand that freedom and personal responsibility are hard and scary. I get that earning your own money, paying and keeping track of your own bills, having to bear the consequences of your decisions and your failures, are enough to make weak people want to retreat to childhood, where the grownups handle all that stuff and you just get to romp and play with nary a negative thought intruding on the fluffy, sparkly clouds of your fantasies.

But the seamy underbelly to that is that a bureaucracy, by definition, cannot care about you or anyone. Reducing humans to possessions is inherently, innately evil. And decisions of life and death should never be made by people who've never met the victim, will not be affected in the slightest by his death, and will likely not even remember his name a year from now.

And finally, despite your frantic attempts to shift the blame for this from government control of health care to some amorphous, unnamed "child welfare law", the fact is that in the United States, which still clings to some vestiges of the consumer also being the customer, child welfare laws still aim at protecting and preserving the lives of children, rather than turning themselves on the head to champion death as "the greater good". Why do you suppose that is?

Or, to put it another way, you'd be a genius if you weren't so frigging stupid.

Your not too impressive either.

Yes, I am.

People in countries with socialized medicine can get outside the system easily? Really? How easy are the Gards finding it?

To repeat. It's not about socialized medicine. It's about a law that when there is a dispute between parents and doctors the childs best interests must be paramount.

None of that has anything to do with the Charlie Gard case. So go plug in your two functioning brain cells, I think they've run out of juice.

Personal attacks instead of intelligent discussion?

Interesting.

You might want to READ the post I was RESPONDING to...before issuing your judgement.

Then again. Maybe not.

Interesting.

I did ... and it definitely deserved a response.

But then, I would suggest that immature personal attacks shouldn't be considered a response. If you can't make a cogent or cohesive counter-argument, then, just maybe, nothing said at all is the better route to take.

 

[Spare_change]

You’ve probably never heard of Charlie Gard.

He’s a terminally ill 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights – an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one – which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot potentially life-saving treatment, they could not. Instead, the Court ruled, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the Court’s justification? Charlie had to “die with dignity.”

Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles and the brain. There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, raised $1.6 million to fly him to the United States for an experimental treatment. But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn’t help Charlie, and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day. Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie’s best interest to die.

UK courts agreed. The Gards appealed to the EU. And now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR stating, “Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

His parents announced:

We begged them to give us the weekend. Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time. But now there isn’t even time for that. Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator but we are being rushed. Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can’t choose how or when our son dies.

There are several levels to the perversity here.

First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of healthcare, at least we promote freedom of choice – and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment stated in court, if Charlie had become ill at “any institution in the US,” they would immediately begin the treatment. But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come secondary to the preservation of the “system,” there is less concern with parental rights. In the United States, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother, so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator; in the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it’s better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the NHS makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it – but that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine – and you don’t even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.

Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control. In the United States, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal; in the EU, it’s apparently no big deal. That’s because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter more than those of doctors who do not raise our children. But once you give up control over life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it’s nearly impossible to take back that control. This case could have been easy: the hospital could have released the child. The hospital didn’t do so because it believed that it had the final say. And why shouldn’t it? It always has the final say.

Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life. It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering – that death is no solution to suffering. But that notion has been stripped away in favor of the secularist standard of “healthy living” – and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who are not terminal, but merely suffer from depression or anorexia. Better to "die with dignity" than live with pain, in the new math. That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath which overtly stated, "Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course," or even the Tufts Medical School version, which stated, "Above all, I must not play at God."

so is it better when an insurance conglomerate with a profit motive refuses to pay for care ... just because"?

dumbass

I would suggest that you don't understand "insurance conglomerate." I'll give you a different post to review - Why do Republicans sabotage Obamacare - then say it's failing? - it will give you the background knowledge you so urgently require. (You'll have to ignore the political discussion - or maybe you shouldn't)

 

[Spare_change]

London (CNN)The parents of baby Charlie Gard stormed out of Britain's High Court on Thursday amid an emotional hearing as they fight to take him to the United States for experimental treatment for a rare genetic disorder.

At a preliminary hearing Monday before the judge who first heard the case, Charlie's parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, were given two days to submit new written evidence regarding the viability of having Charlie treated abroad with experimental nucleoside therapy.

They are battling to keep their terminally ill 11-month-old son on life support so they can take him overseas for the treatment, a step opposed by his doctors on the grounds he may suffer without experiencing any benefit.

The judge, Justice Nicholas Francis, said he was keeping an open mind over his previous ruling that further treatment would be futile. "If there is important new evidence that suggests my decision should be changed then I will change it," he said.

But he insisted the new evidence must be significant for him to reopen the case.

About two hours into the hearing, Charlie's parents abruptly left the court after disagreeing with a comment by the judge.
Yates interrupted Francis as he said that the parents had said they would not want to prolong Charlie's life in its present state, only if there was hope of improvement. "I never said that!" she exclaimed from her seat behind her barrister.

The judge attempted to clarify that one or other of the parents had said it, but both rose and left the court. They returned to the courtroom after the lunch break.

Under examination by the barrister for Charlie's parents, a doctor testifying by video-link from the United States -- who cannot be identified by court order -- supported some key points of the parents' case, saying that the baby's MRI scan did not necessarily indicate structural damage to the brain.

The expert estimated there was an "11 to 56% chance of clinically meaningful improvement" in muscular function with the proposed treatment. The doctor also asserted that keeping Charlie on ventilator would not cause him harm because he did not seem to be in any significant pain.

Charlie's mother responded to the testimony with a thumbs up.
-----------------------------------------------

I would think that would change some people's perspective.

 

[Markle]

Socialized healthcare has nothing to do with this case and its not about money.

Whenever someone says it is not about the money, it is ALWAYS about the money.

Britain's health care system is broke. They have to cut expenses wherever possible, care has to be rationed.

In my humble opinion, the tubes keeping him alive should be disconnected and the child allowed to die peacefully.

HOWEVER, at the same time, that MUST be the parent's decision, not governments. The government may certainly have limits on what they will pay but these parents have said they will pay for the additional care.

 

[Markle]

so is it better when an insurance conglomerate with a profit motive refuses to pay for care ... just because"?

Because of you, as the customer, have the choice of health insurance YOU want and NOT what the government mandates.

We have the best doctors, specialists, and other professionals because we have a profit system. They come here from all over the world to practice with the best equipment, available equipment, and facilities in the world.