Rest in peace, Charlie Gard; finally leaving a world he knew nothing about, other than to suffer pain and a future which at best would be miserable and at worst non existent. What a terribly sad story.
I do not believe the media, for perfectly understandable reasons, reflected what I believe the public mood to have been. I can of course only judge by anecdote and by having spoken and communicated with people in other ways about Charlie’s plight that opinion was somehow balanced in a kind of 50/50 split. My feeling is that the vast majority felt the pain of the Gards but were also overwhelmingly in support of the actions of Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). In fact, other than by some of the more unfortunate comments by family members and outsiders were greeted in disbelief and shock rather than agreement.
First of all, we need to be clear about whom the priority had to be and that was Charlie Gard. Only someone with a heart of stone, or maybe no heart at all, would not feel for Charlie and his parents. Imagine the despair in finding that they had created a child between them and inadvertently handed him a faulty gene that would cruelly diminish his life and ultimately end it prematurely? I have no idea whether some kind of guilt overwhelmed Chris and Connie and I am clear that they should feel none. Until genetics evolves to an extent that these situations can be foreseen, no one is to blame. And speaking of genetics, we enter the world of science and medicine.
GOSH is a truly world class hospital. There are no ifs or buts about that and it is beyond belief, and way beyond the limits of common sense, to comprehend why their medical staff were doubted so much and later received waves of abuse from some of the world’s crankiest individuals, many of whom who turned up to picket the hospital and chant desperately sick abuse at doctors and nurses, as well as interfering in the lives of the parents of other children who were also being treated at GOSH. Does anyone seriously believe anyone at GOSH to have been “guilty” of anything other than working for the best outcome for Charlie Gard? Does anyone seriously believe that GOSH was trying to “murder” Charie? And what kind of monster mind calls on the hospital to release this desperately ill baby from imprisonment? This is sick, it is absolutely mad.
Now we add to the mix, God. Not everyone’s God because I know plenty of believers who, whilst being desperately sympathetic to the Gards, respected totally the decisions of the medical staff who treated Charlie. But there were elements from the religious right and the religiously insane whose agendas were skewed at best and downright detrimental to this little boys wellbeing at worst. One lunatic even suggested this was somehow a “state execution”, as if somehow our politicians were responsible for a crazy conspiracy to kill this child for no reason at all. In the months and years ahead, when Charlie has been laid to rest, there are some people who have a lot of questions to answer and I hope, when things settle down, they are exposed for what they are and why they were at GOSH and the courts. The medical experts did far more to help Charlie Gard than any God managed to do.
Chris Gard and Connie Yates did not attract the sympathy I feel they deserved for reasons I am not sure I understand. On the face of it, many of their public pronouncements were not exactly helpful but let’s consider two things. One is that they had a desperately, terminally ill young child and they are not trained media experts. One must assume they were badly advised by others or not advised at all, which might explain the loose cannon aspects of what they said. It is impossible to know just how they were feeling other than it must have been a wild roller coaster all through the day and all through the night. Who can say how they might react in such awful circumstances? Hopefully, most of us will never know.
It is not true to say that no one emerges with any credit from this sorry episode. GOSH behaved in an exemplary fashion and whilst some of the usual media suspects played on the negative aspects, most reported the story as it was, although as I said before I don’t believe they accurately reflected the public mood for understandable reasons.
I hope it is all over now. I hope there are not going to be books to follow with newspaper serialisations and troubling exposés, other than those who sought to exploit the situation. Charlie must now be allowed to rest in peace and his parents must be allowed time and space to try and somehow rebuild their lives. The death of a young child is the main, the only, story that really matters.
