Charlie Gard’s Mother Permitted to Join Her Betters
After yet another time-and-energy-wasting legal fight, a judge has granted Connie Yates permission to attend a meeting between doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital and American specialist Michio Hirano, at which her son’s fate will be discussed. The hospital had argued against parental representation, on the grounds that the doctors would not be able to “speak freely” about Charlie Gard’s condition and prospects with the parents in attendance.
Hospital representative Katie Gollop argued, “I think there needs to be a very full and open discussion between treating clinicians, potentially of a fairly scientific level. Nothing that I have said on that issue is for any improper purpose. It is to facilitate the provision of best evidence, and not for any other purpose.”
The judge, cutting to the chase, asked, “Do you mean the various clinicians involved will be reluctant to say it as it is with the parents there? I wonder whether there is anything that can be said they couldn’t deal with, because they have had to deal with so much.”
To which Gollum replied, “He’s mine, he’s mine, my precious!”
Oops, sorry, got sidetracked there.
To which Gollop replied, “Very much of what has been said has been enormously difficult. Such that there has been some disturbance, and leaving the court. I am not confident we can have a situation where they are not.”
I’ll leave it to a linguist specializing in primitive dialects to figure out exactly what the hell Katie Gollop, QC, was trying to say there. My best guess is that she meant the parents are too emotional to handle the seriousness of the discussion, and therefore ought to be excluded. This would be consistent with the entire purpose, history, and practice of so-called “palliative care,” which is always focused on driving a wedge between concerned loved ones (“too emotional and self-interested”) and dying patients (whose interests can only be understood and defended by “rational and caring” palliative care doctors).
Chris Gard, Charlie’s father, clearly got that message too, for at this point he interrupted the proceedings, shouting, “He’s our son!”
But what you don’t realize, Mr. Gard, is that in the minds of socialists and their medical agents, the fact that Charlie is your son is precisely what disqualifies you from participating in the decision-making process.
If you want to understand how profoundly true that is, read my new detailed discussion of this question, coming to American Thinker (and Limbo, of course) on Sunday, July 16th.
Finally, in a tiniest window of sanity in an otherwise thoroughly insane tale, the judge determined that Charlie’s mother, at least, should be allowed to join the meeting, even though very smart and important people will be there talking about big grown-up stuff that might disturb her poor little plebeian mind.
Is there any essential element of progressive authoritarianism that will not have been starkly demonstrated, by the conclusion of this sad Charlie Gard saga? I suppose that’s our consolation for watching a baby’s public degradation at the hands of the State. For his parents, of course, there will be no consolation, unless perhaps the world puts an end to the outrage of socialized medicine once and for all, thus saving future parents from their nightmare.
