Charlie Gard- State decides or parents?

IronGiant

Or as someone put it: we shouldn't let him die without experimenting on him, otherwise it's a wasted opportunity.    Not the exact words used.

Cliff

Children are not property. However, until they reach a certain age, children do belong to their parents who love and look after them as their own. No one else has this right including the state. It is known as Parental rights. Isn't that reasonable and correct?

Secondly, they are not wanting to use their baby as a guinea pig to further medical science.
As the child is their responsibility, they want to do every thing they can (even if it doesn't work).
As the child is theirs, they have that right.

Ruperts slippers

I disagree completely Cliff. My children are not mine to do what I want with.

I've got rights to make decisions on their behalf, until I get to the point where my decisions directly affecting them are clearly not in their interests.

That could be if I refuse to let them have a blood transfusion, if I spent a childs trust fund on myself or whether I wanted to subject them to experimental medical treatment with no known benefit.

Parents do not and should not have unrestricted rights in making decisions.

Toko Black

Here's an article that considers the ethical dilemma of reaching an agreement that strikes a balance between the rights of the parents and the state representatives/ Doctors, it's not a straight forward process. Situations such as these are difficult to find a consensus amongst all parties, a situation of dissensus occurs, a reasoned assessment of the situation is difficult to find, arguments from both sides, all have weighty ethical value. Both sides are sincere and believe they are acting in the best interests of the child.
Personally, I wouldn't prolong the life of my child in cases like this and similar terminal cases, or indeed a case of terminal cancer, quality of life issues arise, I would want the best palliative care possible.
That of course if a personal decision, not a judgement or a universal precedent for other parents to follow.
In Favour of Medical Dissensus: Why We Should Agree to Disagree About End‐of‐Life Decisions

IronGiant

As others have hinted at, this is not either a simple case nor an advertisment for the idea that the state has too much control.

I wonder how many people have been reading articles, blogs and news items comming out of the US prompting their responses to this case.

The case has been ongoing for quite some time and has been in the British Press and media.
However, the US press and especially the right wing media has picked up on this story and it has been driven by the Right to Life, anti-liberal, anti-big government and alt-right into a youtube, facebook poo storm.
As I have mentioned before, because I have anti-postmodernist views with regards to things like Feminism where they can reject evidence and science because it's 'patriarchy', I tend to see a lot of alt right and republican aimed videos pushed onto my feed because it is one of the areas they also attack on a regular basis.
Some of the points and arguments on right wing issues these videos highlight I agree with, but for the most part, when evaluating those types of video they are clearly twisted distortions of reality.
It's hard to not take them at face value, but as soon as you are confronted by videos on topics related to stories local and or familiar to yourself, you start to see the inconsitancies, misrepresentation, editing and often complete lies.
Prime examples are when a US based youtube content provider makes a video about something specific to the UK. You often see things we consider as centre politics or even slightly right wing being labeled or sold as 'socialist', 'liberal' etc. To be fair, they are, but not remotely in the pejorative way they mean or intend to portray.
It clearly demonstrates a cultural skew between the UK's concepts and identification of left-right politics and that of the US. Things we as a large majority support, like the NHS are often the targets of US Republican attacks on social media News, video and blog platforms.
So not only are the videos and the views expressed in them right wing, but they are US right wing which is more ideologically and politically driven and dominated than we are used to in the UK - mirroring the same skews in cultural and religious influence in politics between the US and UK.

Now what has this got to do with Charlie Gard ?
Nothing and everything depending on whether or not you are getting involved in the ethical and political circus this poor little child's suffering is being turned into.

Parents in the UK generally have the right to determine what is best for child in almost every aspect of their lives.
However, as we know, in some parents can be negligent, unfit or dangerous.
Most people tend to agree that children need to be protected from dangerous or abusive parents and would not argue against laws and systems being in place to attempt to address those problems.
We may all argue about the effectiveness, efficiency and mistakes those laws and agencies make, but we do all tend to agree on the basic principles of protecting a child's health and welbeing from parents incapable of providing a safe and secure environment, especially if the parents are inflicting physical or mental suffering.
When a child is physically or mentally abused we all tend to be shocked and demand that the state does something about it.
The main issues arise when physical or mental abuse is less simple to understand, make sense of or 'see'.
That is why we have the courts, doctors and experts to clarify and rule on the more difficult, nuanced and less obvious cases based on the laws and our best understanding.
They won't always get it right and we may not always agree on the outcome, but currently it's the best system we have come up with to protect the rights and welbeing of children, parents and society.

In the case of poorly little Charlie, the doctors and experts believe based on their knowledge and experience that Charlie is suffering, is going to die and any further procedures or life support is simply prolonging the child's suffering needlessly.
The parents however are distraught and want to cling on to any hope that their precious child will live.
Therefore the courts were used to establish if the parents hope for their child was unfortunately but understandably in the situation misplaced and causing Charlie to suffer for no benefit to himself.
The different levels of courts in the UK and the EU court of Human Rights all came to the same conclusions based on the evidence.

It's a terrible situation and has peoples emotions running high, but turning into propaganda for political gains seems pretty heartless to me and does not remotely represent the interests of this poor little boy himself.

Pacifico

I completely agree that's not what they want Cliff, but that is what they will effectively be doing. Except the treatment is sufficiently inappropriate it probably won't even achieve that, sadly.

The Dude

I would simply point out that if everyone stopped trying experimental treatment we would still be using leeches and amputations as the normal cures for illness.

Toko Black

If Charlie Gard needed a heart transplant who would we trust most to perform the operation?
His father, Donald Trump, The Pope, or a team of GOSH heart specialists?

bjd

If everyone relied on emotions, ideology and anecdotes instead of the imperical evidence based scientific method that underpins modern medicine, then it's a damn sight more likely they we still would be.

Without compassion, care and putting the need to reduce human suffering above all else ..... we might as well still be.

Cliff

New experts, new court case. And so the anguish and suffering of the parents, and the poor child, goes on.