There is a cruel echo of the judgment of Solomon about Charlie Gard's unknowing passage through the English and the European courts. Solomon manifested his wisdom by putting to the test a mother's devotion to the preservation of her baby's life at any cost. For the wise king's latter day descendants the question is whether exactly that devotion should be repudiated. However the parallel sadly withers fast. Solomon's psychological acuity reunited a baby with its mother resulting in an unequivocally just and, for the mother, happy outcome. No judge's ruling can provide what baby Charlie's parents long for which is a cure and a healthy child. At most the court can confer agency on them or the illusion of agency which, when parents are desperate, can however unfounded seem as sustaining.
Like many around the world I have reflected often upon this helpless, stricken child and his parents' ceaseless quest to prevail in the face of medical and judicial opinion. However he has been much on my mind long before he became a national talking point and certainly before he became a political pawn shamelessly deployed by Trump and the object of the Pope's prayers. Indeed on two occasions I have walked within arm's length of his parents. Not because I happened to pass them en route to the Royal Courts of Justice when Charlie's case was being argued but because I was in the same place with the same purpose, visiting a child in Great Ormond Street Hospital.
GOSH's doctors and nurses are not infallible nor are they angels. They are however consummate professionals, many of them not merely national leaders in their field but pioneering world class medics. The hard and pitiless reality is that when a hospital treats the sickest children in the nation not all of them will go home.
GOSH's doctors and nurses are not infallible nor are they angels. They are however consummate professionals, many of them not merely national leaders in their field but pioneering world class medics. The hard and pitiless reality is that when a hospital treats the sickest children in the nation not all of them will go home.
You would hope it might not need saying but every single member of its staff dedicates every fibre of his or her being to trying to prevent that from happening. The terrible media ferment that has accompanied the Charlie Gard case betrays a common tension at the heart of our relationship with doctors. We can both expect far too much of them and give them far too little credit. I don't know how the case will resolve but I do know that condemning his doctors as murderous and unfeeling is outrageous and threatening medical staff at the hospital should be severely punished.
It has been reported that a number of donors to the hospital have declared an intention to withdraw their support. Such a decision heaps injustice on tragedy. This great hospital and its sick children need all the money you can spare. In October I am running a half marathon in support of them and if you wish you can donate here.
