As Americans were spending time scrambling to give the IRS their annual protection fee, the court system in the United Kingdom, at the behest of National Health Service bureaucrats, abducted and murdered an 8-month-old baby. This brazen abduction was done in broad daylight with full press coverage and the UK government and courts claimed loudly this was humane and the right thing to do.
This might sound like a severe bout of hyperbole, but that is exactly what happened. On April 11, 2017, the courts in the UK ruled that Charlie Gard, against the wishes of his parents, must be immediately removed from life support and left to die. Unlike cases in the US where it is usually the family that is arguing for or against extending hope that their loved ones can be rescued, the only people arguing against continued efforts were government officials and some third party public onlookers. What makes the Charlie Gard case so disturbing is that this is a case where no family member made any argument to remove the child from life support. The government simply overruled them and took their child. As an 8 month old, Charlie was in no position to formulate a living will or even have discussions with relatives as to how he wished to be treated with a potentially fatal illness.
Charlie was born with a rare genetic condition called mitochondrial depletion syndrome rrm2b. This genetic disorder comes with a host of issues ranging from muscle deterioration, seizures and, in Charlie’s case, left him blind and deaf. The life expectancy of this disease is between 3 months and 12 years from the onset of symptoms. There are no current proven treatments beyond clinical studies.
This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on April 25, 2017.
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