Some of you may have seen references in certain U.S. media about the ‘Charlie Gard’ case in Britain. A great uproar about so-called ‘death panels’ and the perils of single-payer health systems.
Briefly, a boy called Charlie Gard has an incurable condition. His medical advisers say he is dying and has no chance of recovery. He should be allowed to die in peace. His parents heard about an alleged experimental treatment in the USA and wanted him moved to try it. The British doctors thought there is in fact no such hope. The matter went to the courts as the parents tried to get the doctors findings over-ruled.
Great excitement in parts of the USA.
The 'American Thinker' website said that the case represented
“a perfect crystallization of the full heart and soul of socialized or ‘single payer’ health care”, a “tyrannically impersonal “medical system” in which “the individual human being is property of the State”.
Liberty Unyielding carried a comment suggesting that the core British principle was that
“the authority of government over human life is itself a first principle, so inviolable that everything else must yield to it.”
And the Wall Street Journal added establishment respectability to this line of comment:
“a system that elevated a judge’s opinion about what was best for Charlie over loving parents. Few should be surprised, because the brutal reality is that when the state is responsible for nearly all health spending it inevitably takes responsibility for life and death decisions too.”
You can readily see the political capital being laid out for the benefit of current debates on U.S. healthcare.
And it is all nonsense.
The UK journalist Melanie Phillips is a well known right-wing commentator, roundly hated by progressive political thinkers. But for once she argues on the side of good sense. I can only suggest that everyone dealing with the over-heated medical debates in the USA take note of what she says and draw on it for material to combat the militant misinformation about Charlie Gard and his family which will no doubt be spread around in the weeks to come when the child finally dies.
I recommend reading the whole of her piece entitled ‘a cruel and ignorant campaign ’. She says:
I have never witnessed such concentrated ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and unthinking cruelty as has been displayed by the American political right over the tragic case of Charlie Gard.
Core point
this case had absolutely nothing to do with the state or the government. This was not Charlie’s parents v the state. This was Charlie’s parents v the medical profession, a conflict in which the courts were brought in as the dispassionate arbiter in the best interests above all of the sick child.
This was another thing the American commentators seemed incapable of grasping. In the US, the courts are highly politicised with judicial figures appointed by the state. But in Britain the courts are truly independent, representing law and justice. The state does not tell the British courts what to do; the British courts in fact hold the state to account. So the idea that the courts were enforcing state diktat in this case was totally ridiculous.
Nor had this anything to do with “socialised medicine” or the NHS system. This was purely a case where doctors were making decisions absolutely in line with medical ethics, which hold that causing a patient any pain or distress from treatment is only permissible if there is clear benefit to the patient from that treatment. In this case, there was not.
Again read the whole piece to get the full flavour of the events, including the comment about the U.S. doctor actually having a financial interest in the alleged new treatment that gave the British parents false hopes.
We can all I hope join in the final part of the statement by the hospital concerned (GOSH — Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children)
“All of GOSH’s thoughts go with Charlie and his mother and father – the hospital wishes each of them peace in their hearts at the end of this day and each day to come”.
Amen.
