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Charlie Gard’s parents give up their court fight — 56 Comments

  1. It’s interesting that this occurred the same week that a child which had drowned showed remarkable improvement with an experimental treatment using oxygen and then hyperbaric oxygen.

    I think mitochondrial diseases can be inherited from the mother although I don’t know the details in this case. If true in this case, the parents face the possibility of another affected child.

  2. He who pays the piper calls the tune. In socialized medicine the doctor doesn’t work for you but for the state. The state pays the doctor so your desires are irrelevant.

  3. I will ask your Physician readers to comment on this, but I think this shows that a sizable percentage of Doctors really enjoy the power involved in making these kind of decisions. Just look at the Dutch euthanasia experience or the many memoirs of physicians expounding on how they would forgo treatment for many diseases.

    This assumption of total knowledge and certainty in the ability to predict outcomes flies in the long history of medicine. Most treatments in the past did not work but you could only find this out by trying. When I was young most childhood leukemia cases were fatal, but the medical community kept trying with some really nasty chemotherapy regimes. Now a very larger percentage of kids survive. If we don’t try we don’t learn.

  4. I emailed a friend this am:
    “I expect you have been following this case, most ethically troubling, in the land of the Britons, to whom we historically owe so much.
    “That a National Health System, a judge and a hospital can over-rule the united desire of the parents, and stall, drag out any possibility of transfer to an American facility for treatment called experimental but treatment nevertheless, refuse offers of the experimental drug to be delivered for administration in the sarcastically-named “Great” Ormond Street Hospital, and push to terminate life are morally grotesque.
    “If this same attitude had prevailed in the 1970s, when most pediatric cancers (aside from some leukemias)were fatal, we would not today be curing 85% of pediatric cancers. Anti-cancer progress is necessarily and ethically incremental. As is all medicine.

    “Medicine is a great gift from God.

    “Now the hospital and its physicians will exercise their ‘right’ to terminate the baby’s life. Even his parents accede to that.”

    Even his parents accede to that. The overweening power of The State.

  5. “It should have been their right as parents and as human beings to make that decision in a timely manner.” neo

    The Left, as we all know is not really interested in parental rights, in fact they are opposed to them because the primary obstacle to early leftist indoctrination is parental influence. This is the first step to eliminating parental rights. At base justified by it taking “a village to raise a child”…

    “If you want a vision of the (left’s) future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” – George Orwell

  6. DJG: I am an MD. I take medicine and its ethics, expressed and implied, very seriously. It has been my great good fortune both to become and to be the 3rd generation doc in my line; now my daughter is the 4th.
    We cover more than a century!

  7. This strikes me as a pure power play on the part of the State.

    No morals or principles involved. The State is in charge and don’t you forget it.

  8. “If this same attitude had prevailed in the 1970s, when most pediatric cancers (aside from some leukemias)were fatal, we would not today be curing 85% of pediatric cancers. Frog

    Now that this attitude is starting to prevail, even here… medical advancement will start to gradually atrophy in the West.

    The underlying attitude is that misery for all is better than that some should ‘unfairly’ benefit and, if any benefit (with of course, the exception of the elite) it is patently ‘unfair’ to those who do not.

  9. huxley,

    E.U. bureaucrats, like all bureaucrats… are territorial ‘creatures’.

  10. GB: the sun sets in the West. We have accomplished the marvel of hastening its setting, though could have slowed its setting to an infinitesmally slow crawl. But we only have the power to make that happen once, and that has been squandered.

    See a fine new book : The Strange Death of Europe, by Douglas Murray.

  11. Sarah Palen was right. Death panels are inevitable when the government controls your health care.

  12. I’ve been disappointed that the media did not see the Charlie Gard affair as an insight into “single payer” health care. It would have been instructive. Perhaps the media’s love of government medicine bought their silence on the matter.

  13. There was a fund raiser in our town for a child with mitochondrial diseae a while back & he was mentioned in the paper occasionally, lived to be 11 yrs old. Don’t know how,similar he was to Charlie, but he had some early treatment and some quality of life, BTW he had siblings who were healthy.

  14. Mr Frank, the Media will never see what they don’t want to see.

    Parental rights have been eroding for some time here, as well as in Europe; and are now virtually nonexistent any time a situation reaches the courts. Only natural I suppose, since bureaucratic experts and Judges are much more capable of making decisions about a child’s welfare than are ignorant parents. The only question is “who cares the most?”. Or does that matter?

  15. Eventually it will come down to unintended consequences. The elitists will never stop their agenda of achieving absolute power until they suffer the unintended consequences of their lust.

  16. Again, that’s what single payer means. You are literally not allowed to spend more money for better health care, whether for expensive experimental treatments, or for a hospital bed that doesn’t have maggots in it.

  17. Until two years ago, when I gave up and retired, I taught medical students for 15 years. Before that I was a surgical attending and taught surgery residents for another 30.

    I see medical students resigning themselves to lives as employees of some corporation or the state. I used to ask how many were going to school on student loans. All raised their hands. I mentioned that the military would pay the tuition in return for an obligation of a few years. None were interested even though many will not pay off their $400,000 loans until they retire, if then.

    The days of the doctor as small business owner are mostly gone although I know a few older docs who are dropping all insurance and practicing for cash.

  18. Death panels. The whole point of national healthcare is to minimize resource consumption, promote the elite care, and ensure sumptuary laws make it impossible for the rich peons to use up valuable immortality drugs

  19. I did not earlier respond to Dirty Jobs Guy’s concern that some physicians “enjoy” the kind of like-taking power that Charlie will soon experience.
    I think it is part and parcel of Euro-thought, the voluntary suicide of Western culture and the murder of its morals.

    It is a power trip. People without much power revel in the opportunity to exercise it when the infrequent opportunity arises (with thanks to Robert Kagan).

    I did it once, as a first-year resident. Took a long brain-dead patient without relatives off a respirator. My intern and I watched her cardiogram as it deteriorated into ventricular fibrillation and then flat-lined. The state disposed of her remains. The arrogance of my conduct has haunted me ever since. Youth! Smart-ass, all-knowing but unwise youth.

    We are not nearly as morally degenerate a medical profession as the Euros. The slippery slope we’re on is not nearly as steep, but we are on it. Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, as it is in Holland. So we are truly sliding downward. Into Hell. Believing Hell does not exist makes the slide easier.

  20. Sign Dave and the Demoncrat supporters of Trum right up. They’ll be next.

  21. Believing Hell does not exist makes the slide easier.

    They fall into two categories. Those that believe this life’s reward is all that matters, there is nothing else afterwards so might as well get rid of the competition.

    And those that believe they can get jail free card even if they die, since they were so powerful in life.

  22. In many ways, this universe operates much like a very small pond vs a very large empire. The village enforcer may be feared and respected, in his little group of tens and hundreds, but once he gets out into the big leagues and enters into the Empire of a million +, all of a sudden there are new laws and new rules which no longer apply to his alien world view, which is now the super minority and nobody really cares that he was able to enforce much of anything on tens and hundreds.

    The world of the spirit is likened to that of a global empire, vs the petty tyrants that believe their own little pond is the universe.

  23. I am certainly not qualified to comment about the medical pros and cons. On a human level, it defies reason.

    To me, this illustrates a primary fact of Leftists. It’s all about Control, the masses do not have the ability or right to decide their own fate. The collective knows how to live your life, and those of your dependents, better than you do. It must not be questioned. The full weight of the Government will be brought against you, and you will knuckle under.

    Welcome to Single Payer.

  24. parker,

    “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.” George Orwell

    Should they succeed in reaching their goals, they shall find they’ve mounted a ‘tiger’ from which they cannot dismount and they shall reap the whirlwind.

  25. I see medical students resigning themselves to lives as employees of some corporation or the state.

    Mike K: Thanks for posting. I would enjoy hearing more.

    I do wonder how current doctors and incoming doctors think about the new status quo of medicine.

    True, they will make good money and enjoy a certain amount of prestige, but they will indeed be employees compared to American doctors of yore.

  26. This is why I rabidly resist the trite, “It takes a village to raise a child.”

    Keep the bloody village out of my bloody business; especially my child raising business. I need help, I’ll ask.

    My oldest is a 1st-year med student. They talked about this case in their ethics class. It took my wife & I some time over the holidays to debrief her & bring her back around to…none of the state’s business to interfere.

    Neo…as sad as it is…it isn’t sad. It’s state-sanctioned state-sponsored post-birth abortion. That doesn’t make me sad. It leaves me really really angry. I’m glad the NHS in the UK has to answer to God for this one…I’m pretty sure this is one where I would be less than merciful.

  27. Door Keepers, that’s what I call people who have a bit of authority and the occasional chance to exercise power watching those under their power become unhappy while they, the door keeper get a bit of a thrill. People who say no when a yes would be acceptable and when they come, the door keepers encounter resistance things just get better.

    For those of us in the USA the decisions made by the docs and the courts don’t make much sense and I kind of think a lot of us would gather friends and relatives and abscond with the child since he is our own little person. Of course international travel and stuff in this case but that was my thinking when I first read about Charlie Gard’s situation.

    The worst that would have happened is that Charlie would die however he might not, at least for a bit and the medical science of his condition might move forward, even a little would have meaning for his life. I am sorry for the family and so for a Nation that will do this to people.

    I really dislike Gate Keepers. I usually comes down to a person saying “I can’t do that.” And my reply is can’t or won’t because won’t indicates a decision and can’t implies reasons beyond your power to decide. This came down to a big I won’t let you have your child to pursue further medical treatment.

  28. GB,

    I have been thinking about that event horizon since the early 1980s. I have trained in certain skills and studied many strategies. I have taught my children well and they will teach my grandchildren. If I am still around when it kicks off I hope to be useful.

  29. OldTexan,

    IMO if it gets personal, get personal in a well planned way and do it quietly at a place of your choosing. As they say, revenge is a dish best served cold. It will come down to that. The elitists and their bureaucratic legions understand zero in my world.

    Charlie’s parents should have determined his fate not faceless bureaucrats who fear no push back. Make them taste fear.

  30. Cap’n Rusty.

    I do not look forward to that day, but I accept that it is coming. The left is relentless and never stops until they die. Currently, they feel immortal. Fools.

  31. Mike K, your post touches a chord on a couple of levels. First, the unwillingness of so many to earn their way via sweat equity. The wonderful U.S. taxpayer is more than willing to set almost any citizen on the professional escalator in return for a few years of service. True, it can be at a high price; as a Naval Aviator once said, I gave the country a blank check on my life.

    But, the other chord is the remembrance of wonderful MDs from my youth. They would come to the home at all hours, when needed to dispense medicine and care–if not too much sympathy. Some of them, to be sure, parlayed their professional connections into lucrative business ventures. I suspect that most did not. It was an article of faith that every judgement, and every action, was intended for the benefit of the patient–and nothing else. Life at the personal level, including “health care”, was pretty straight forward in the 40s and 50s.

  32. If you think health care is messed up now, wait until it’s free. When Obamacare came out, I wondered how you could add tens of millions of people to insurance rolls and not add any doctors and nurses.

  33. If I am still around when it kicks off I hope to be useful.

    You got pretty eager about the conflict going hot a few years ago. But what I said before was accurate. Not happening yet for a few more years.

    Something interesting might happen in 2017 Sept to October. October Surprise! as usual.

    But the longer term timeline is absolutely 2035-2045. But things will happen a little bit sooner, as a precursor.

  34. Welcome to the Novus ordo seclorum. Courtesy of FDR, who put it on your dollar. Go check it. And the Latin translation. And where the Pyramid Eye comes from.

    Also, Parker shouldn’t be worried, all his skills he gained in this life will pass on to the Last Battle, which is arriving sooner and sooner. In the Last Battle, everybody is resurrected for one last confrontation between light and darkness. Every angelic and divine entity will become embodied, including the Jesus guy. Mortals will become avatars, wielding the power of gods to kill gods. It is indeed the Final Battle, what the Norse called Ragnarok.

    Where the living will envy the dead.

  35. OldFlyer:
    But, the other chord is the remembrance of wonderful MDs from my youth. They would come to the home at all hours, when needed to dispense medicine and care…

    Yes, one saved my life with a house call, immediate diagnosis of appendicitis, and quick trip in the back of his car to emergency surgery at the hospital less than an hour later. That’s when malpractice lawsuits were a distant thought of course. My then single working mother, with a little help from her parents, paid the bill without insurance. These memories of what it was like will soon be forgotten as we march into full socialized medicine.

  36. Explain to me once more why America lost hundreds of thousands young men’s lives and billions of dollars to make sure that those limey wankers wouldn’t speak German?

  37. “If this same attitude had prevailed in the 1970s, when most pediatric cancers (aside from some leukemias)were fatal, we would not today be curing 85% of pediatric cancers. Frog

    Now that this attitude is starting to prevail, even here… medical advancement will start to gradually atrophy in the West.

    well DUH..
    when the rich paid for expensive experimental drugs and were the ginea pigs, of course we would get cures and things (but the socialists want just the successful ones the minute that is discovered, ignoring what the unsuccessful ones did).

    fast foward to socialist success, and now the state pays, and its not good to invest in people that costs literally thousands to millions and would at best be buying one vote, if they lived. and if you did it you would have to pay for others to do it.

    So now, the great medical atrophy that was easy to predict, but impossible to believe in such a po mo culture as ours… just as democide is, and that a certain class of people are not having children. in fact, there was a great comparison from the UK press calling for more abortions and all that wiht pictures of white babies, so that we can save the planet, and in the next breath, an article that they are importing islamics to make up for the population collapse of the natives!!!

    of course, its easy to explain, predict, point out the way it will work, but its NOT what people want to hear, so thats that.

    you can ignore all this because i only really deal in uncomfotable points… and not in a comfortable way which doesnt work and gives me migranes for the contortions necessary which serve only to NOT get the mssage accross.

    when you pay, you get what you want
    when the state pays, you get what they want, union members and their pensions will take your care (better cost to vote ratio), and medicine will stagnate because any new thing will cost more… especially in the begining.

    now if you know the investment landscape, you will find that the medical community is NOT bothering much with the things that everyone has that can have wide disparity in effects and benefits and side problems… and going for orphan drugs which you can have 10,000 people with the condition, and charge 100k a pill/injection/treatment and the government under their own rules HAS to pay.

    the market is malformed becuase of the government
    not to mention that in academic ways, they dont give raises any more if they can help it. for several reasons ranging from diversity goals they set for themselves and break the law to follow while putting out made up awards as a reason to do it, and they have also decided that MERIT is white privelege and racist, so working hard and earning a MERIT raise is a no no academically… we all should be happy like he HARVARD and YALE ceos that earn 10x what we do and dont care about a raise…

    but thats your medicine.
    not to mention other wonderful things
    like 20% rollover and stuff that would make ALL normal peoples toes curl (and a lot of it being they run business the nasty way they imagine capitalists do (when they dont!!!))

    you get what you pay for
    and in this case, you aint paying
    so beggars cant be choosers
    charlie gards parents and the UK forgot that
    funny thing, there is a slang term that fits this too
    beggar them all!

  38. Tuvea Says:
    July 25th, 2017 at 8:51 am
    Explain to me once more why America lost hundreds of thousands young men’s lives and billions of dollars to make sure that those limey wankers wouldn’t speak German?

    FDR promised Americans that they wouldn’t be sent to foreign wars. Then consolidated his 4 terms by going to war and looking for a pretext, he found it in Pearl Harbor.

    FDR wasn’t all that interested in Germany until Germany attacked Stalin.

  39. The preposterous arrogance of the judge in Charlie’s case is on display here:
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/charlie-gard-judge-said-case-10863989
    He impugns the social media (getting the word out to millions) and complains that his Prime Minister, Pope Francis and President Trump offered opinions and appeals.
    The judge says, in effect, that the hospital, which claimed the right to terminate Charlie’s life, needed his adjudication because the parents were opposed. It was the NHS hospital which brought the case to court, as I understand it.

    The tedious legal process, which always takes months, engendered that Charlie’s brain damage became too great and was irreversible.Who is at fault here? The sluggard berobed and bewigged judge.

    A lawyer determining by himself, as a sitting judge, whether or not it is worthwhile to pursue a medical treatment is entirely bizarre. Pretends he understands medicine. Claims he carefully and objectively considered all the facts of the case. Disregarded expert opinions of physicians with whom he disagreed about medical matters.
    But he excluded any statement as to the morality, or lack thereof, of his judicial conduct. Omnipotent, godlike.

  40. Ymar, I cannot let your error stand.
    “Looking for a pretext”? Tighten your screws, pal.
    FDR sought and got a declaration of war against Japan after Pearl Harbor.
    Germany, Japan’s ally, then declared war on the USA. First.

  41. Of course FDR was looking for a pretext, since he was already sending arms to Britain/Russia without that declaration of war. He was already violating his promise, and thus needed a pretext.

    Wilson also did the same thing with the Lusitania. Gulf of Tonkin.

    It works every time against Americans like you, Frog.

    Germany, Japan’s ally, then declared war on the USA. First.

    Which is irrelevant, since after Pearl Harbor all of japan’s allies would be enemies.

  42. Tighten your screws, pal.

    The Leftist alliance has been fooling you Americans for decades, if not centuries, Frog. Figure out what the SJWs and Leftists did to con you, and realize this as you Suffer; you should have known it all along but you did not, because they fooled you.

  43. Ymar Sakar:

    Lately you seem to have been increasing your personal attacks on other commenters here, both in number and in intensity. I request that in the future you reduce and/or remove that sort of thing if you want to make your points. It’s not necessary to do this to make your points, but in particular what tends to happen is that the back-and-forth tends to drop to a more personal attack and defend, attack and defend level, and substance gets lost.

    I’m not saying that everyone has to agree or that no one can criticize anyone else. But it shouldn’t be taking over.

  44. Ymar is brilliant and the rest of us are fools.

    But this thread is about Charlie Gard, from which Ymar seeks a deflection.

  45. Ymar has his own blog. We do not need him here, Neo. He is a superior human, an Ubermensch, and should be restricted to slogging through his own self-generated mud.

  46. “These parents weren’t going to remove the child from a hospital offering some hopeful treatment to take him to a quack somewhere.” – Neo

    Even if it were to “a quack somewhere” – it ought to be their decision.

    Was the issue technically over maintaining the mechanical ventilation (at government expense? in a nationalized system there may not be an option to pay, a pandora’s box nobody supporting single payer systems want to open) until some medical transport team (paid for by the family) took over?

    The decision in the quote provided reads like it is.

    I confess to not having followed the story and the couple links I found on memorandum don’t address that.

  47. But this thread is about Charlie Gard, from which Ymar seeks a deflection.

    It’s more like my comment on FDR got your goat, Frog, and now you can’t counter the counter.

    One would think I shot your dog or something, as your reaction is typical for someone emotionally attached to a paradigm, although this one is less a Democrat paradigm and more like an American paradigm of WWII patriotism. Challenging the paradigm is strictly forbidden.

    Even the woman author that had evidence for how Truman and FDR’s administration had clearly visible Communist agents and spies, didn’t get treated well. Instead of debating or refuting it, Sovietologists just went on the character assassination.

    It’s not necessary to do this to make your points, but in particular what tends to happen is that the back-and-forth tends to drop to a more personal attack and defend, attack and defend level, and substance gets lost.

    The ultimate substance is that Ymar and Trum are very similar. Perhaps it is the Game Theory. I am the best example of why I ridicule Trum and when people ridicule and attack me, this serves my point. They also attack their boy king Trum, which I accept as valid, when they attack me for the things I do to reflect their anger and hate back on themselves. It’s not something they can win against, because it’s not Ymar being crazy any more. The crazy and the hate is in DC and is in their hearts now. No getting rid of it, no matter what I do about it.

    It’s not 2d chess any more.

    2016 election and all the other antics people have created in this country, led to did not change me at all. I’ve been thinking the same thoughts since 2007, which I have written about. It was better to synthesize an appropriate argument and logic back in 2007 for your blog, because that was the environment here in 2007, as people proclaimed Victory and Peace… these days, logic isn’t so big any more. The new world order.

    I told people like GB, years ago, about the mirror.

    People also think I can’t detect their emotions, if they refuse to engage me. But I can. Because they have a textual format and style they go with, and so long as they write even one line towards me, I’ll pick it up. And unlike most people online, I’m not usually wrong either. I have quite the accuracy in detecting human intent and emotions online, has something to do with the student of propaganda experience.

    I am a mirror. If they want to talk substance, I’ll reflect their substance. But people are emotional, they are sad, they are engaged (in war), they have hate in their hearts and refuse to REPENT or change themselves. I end up reflecting all the negativity there is around.

    Especially around election time, that is a great time for me to go neutral and cold. Everyone is too charged up to listen to anybody. It’s only between elections that people are off their propaganda feed long enough for anything to get through to them.

    The accusation of Frog that I am distracting from the OP, is an interesting, illuminating and ultimately ineffective shot against me. I have seen far worse. Besides, it’s not even true.

    http://neoneocon.com/2017/07/24/charlie-gards-parents-give-up-their-court-fight/#comment-2236267

    I was responding to Tuvea, so Frog would have to accuse Tuvea of being a sock puppet or distractor first, for the charge to have effect.

    What Frog is really annoyed about isn’t Ymar’s comments about Frog, but Ymar’s comments about Trum, and how Ymar is so similar to Trum that anybody criticizing Ymar would also get hit by cognitive dissonance and it doesn’t work. That’s why he needs to get rid of me, because it is not even about my comments to people here, it’s about the fact that I exist in a way which makes a Trum parody not even a parody any more. It’s why they go crazy and talk about Ubermenschen. That’s as crazy as Dave saying I’m a racist.

    Since you aren’t intervening when people fire shots against me Neo, there’s no cease fire. And it’s not like I prefer one way vs or another, do what you want.

    I’m a mirror. And Trum’s been hearing too many whispers at night to be able to easily tolerate the stress of the White House, so he is unleashing the “Kraken”, ironically.

  48. Lately you seem to have been increasing your personal attacks on other commenters here, both in number and in intensity.

    Since you want to ignore personal attacks like this against me, what do you expect, Neo.

    “Tighten your screws, pal.”

    I’m a human being, at least, and I take care to call others humans, irregardless of what else they may be. So when someone says I have screws that need tightening, what do you even think that means, Neo. I know what it means.

    So either either intercede and stop the attacker, or don’t. But stop like acting when I counter fire, it’s me increasing the intensity.

    The last time I talked to or about Frog was 6 months ago. May not even have been once since the election.

    So where did this “intensification” really come from, I have to question that.

  49. And thank god for this line.

    “slogging through his own self-generated mud.”

    Couldn’t have said it better, ever since the self Advent of the Alt Right, which I knew about even before they self labeled themselves that way.

    They can’t stop winning, even with Trum’s mud. So when a Trum supporter says this about me, you know something has their goat.

  50. In the interest of amity.

    In the interest of amity, when you decide to fire against me, prepare to be fired back against. I’m not the GOP E or the nice conservatives that the Alt Right and Breitbart smashed around like a Cruz kid.

    When you get angry about it, maybe it’s time to rethink your approach.

  51. Ymar Sakar:

    The fact situation in the Schiavo case was very different.

    I’m in a hurry, so I’m not looking this up in any detail to refresh my memory—but Schiavo was not a child, she was a woman in her mid-twenties when she sustained a brain injury. Her husband alleged her wishes had been expressed earlier to him about being kept alive under extraordinary circumstances (feeding tube, ventilator, etc.), and she did not want it. Her parents disagreed. The fight was between the two stated versions of the adult Terry Schiavo’s wishes.

    By far the best US analogy to the Gard situation is actually the case of Jahi McGrath, not Schiavo.

    Also, the legal standard and the rules about court intervention are very different between the US and Britain. I am planning a post on the subject; it’s rather complex.

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