BABY CHARLIE GARD

I have to ask this question: who among us can determine that someone needs to die? Does the law empower us to legislate life and death? What is our obligation, to preserve or end life? Where is societies responsibility when it comes to health-care funding, medical interventions, the responsibilities of hospitals, medical workers, and the state?

How does one allow taking away even the slightest glimmer of hope, and hope does glimmer when all one sees is the darkness of death, made only darker when a child is involved. Do we still hold life as sacred?

Charlie Gard died because of mitochondrial depletion syndrome, leaving him brain damaged and unable to breathe without help. It did a lot more than just attack little Charlie, it pained beyond repair the hearts and souls of two other people, his parents.

But the courts in England, where healthy judges try to make sound legal decisions, based on justice preside. They were presented with a glimmer of hope, one that comes from America in the form of an experimental therapy that was considered hopeful by American doctors. Yet the English doctors and court decided it held no hope, and so they dispatched Charlie to die. If you wish to argue this point, just ask the parents as they mend their broken hearts.

Losing a child is the coldest of events in life. It stays with you for the rest of your life if you are a parent. You ask yourself what else you could have done or done differently, it pulls you down and it reminds you every day as a parent. It floods your eyes from time to time, and although time helps fade all the memories, they still persist.

And so, the courts decided not to give Charlie a chance at life, sending him to America was not an option, giving another tool to the parents would not be acceptable, better to allow the parents the gut wrenching feeling of watching their child die when hope might be around the corner. Two men, a President of the US and the Pope begged to make Charlie go to America for treatment but the court said no. The doctor who was perfecting the treatment was willing to go to England and once again the court responded, no!

Charlie was removed from life-support and moved to a place away from the hospital to die, I guess to clear the calendar of the English court.

Having lost a child about Charlie's age, I can tell you when all hope is lost, it is only lost when that child is pronounced dead, then the life-long pain begins.