Charlie Gard not allowed to receive Vatican's care, hospital spokesman says

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

Charlie Gard not allowed to receive Vatican’s care, hospital spokesman says

By Lindsey Bever July 5 at 12:47 PM

Amid an emotionally charged fight for Charlie Gard, a British hospital that plans to disconnect the terminally ill infant from life support declined to move him to the Vatican's children's hospital for care.

Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital had asked whether the child could be transferred to Rome to receive care after Pope Francis and President Trump voiced support for Charlie, an 11-month-old British boy who has a rare genetic condition and resulting brain damage that has robbed him of the ability to move his arms and legs, cry, eat or breathe on his own.

A hospital spokesman in Rome told The Washington Post on Wednesday that London's Great Ormond Street Hospital turned down the offer, citing legal reasons, but that officials were working on a solution.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano it is “right that decisions continued to be led by expert medical opinion, supported by the courts,” according to the Press Association. Great Ormond Street Hospital declined to comment Wednesday on the recent development and has not spoken about next steps.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/05/charlie-gard-not-allowed-to-receive-vaticans-care-hospital-spokesman-says/

[LisaM]

1. This is like Terry Schiavo all over again.

I feel for the family and I like the Pope, but enough is enough for this suffering little baby.

[SoCalNative]

2. I'm sorry

but why can't people understand that sometimes nature is right and survival of the fittest is the best method? Just because we CAN keep people mechanically alive does not mean that we should. Sometimes I think technology is a curse.

[Warpy]

3. It has been in this case

While I sympathize with the parents, the loss of a child being the most devastating loss anyone can experience, the heroics of intubating this little one with no hope he'd ever improve was the wrong thing to do. Death should have been allowed to take him as gently as possible, his parents allowed to hold him without having tubes and wires in the way.

I wish medical school as a little more responsible to the real needs of a patient instead of teaching the use of technology and painful heroics to artificially extend lives that have lost their meaning.

I'm all for heroics in non terminal conditions, they can prolong real lives, people being discharged and eventually getting back to what they were doing before they got sick. However, no one, child or adult, should be subjected to any of it when the condition is known to be terminal.