Thread by @GodlessNZ

1) The way the case of little Charlie Gard was handled (by all involved) was a tragedy. His suffering, and that of his parents, could have been greatly reduced.

Please hear me out. Media on all sides distorted the facts. I have read all the court papers.

2) The parents' desire to try an experimental treatment, at no cost to the British government, is understandable from their perspective, but sadly they couldn't face the fact that it was no "treatment." The doctor was a quack, of the worst kind.

3) No doctor in the world could have successfully treated Charlie. The specific type of brain disorder he had cannot, I repeat cannot, be treated by any of the currently available experimental treatments. This was knowable from the start of the process, months before it ended.

(4) Furthermore, the doctor concerned failed to ask Charlie's treating doctors for access to basic medical records at the start, that would have made this fact clear to him & anyone else who put two & two together. His incompetence & dubious ethics gave the parents false hope.

(5) Even the doctor himself admitted this fact at the end of the process. But by then, the parents had become utterly entrenched in their position. And the hospital had bullied them, and even the Pope and the POTUS had been drawn in, without being given the medical facts.

(6) The Court accepted the medical opinions that there was no way to rule out whether Charlie was experiencing pain from the daily interventions required to keep him alive. His disorder literally prevented the normal signs from manifesting.

(7) I'm sure that the fear of waking up during surgery but being unable to tell the doctors, is pretty universal. It can happen, though it is exceedingly rare.

UK (and US) law allows a Court to step in on behalf of any patient who is in the same situation Charlie clearly was.

(8) Charlie became a political football, which contributed to his being kept alive, likely suffering, with no chance of improvement.

His case completely different to the case of the British woman being forced by the Court to have her unborn baby killed.

Please be clear.

(9) In her case (and I hope we never know her name), the Court has usurped the express wishes of her mother & legal rep., (given her intellectual disability.)

Her own wishes have less legal standing but should be considered, nonetheless.

This Court decision is abhorrent.

(10) The mental & emotional harm being done to her by this decision is far worse than whatever risk is entailed by her giving birth naturally.

I'm not aware of any prognosis for her child. But the usual practice is to at least allow the child to be born & have palliative care.

(11) Two cases can be different on a number of points, as these two are.

Despite my many hours of reading about Charlie's case, I had to stop reading the replies to my threads, bc I was often talking to a brick wall.

Conservatives can virtue-signal too, you know.

END