Charlie Gard: The Force Of Parental Love

“If Charlie Gard had been born 40 years ago,” said Peter Wilby in the New Statesman, “there would have been no doubt about what would, and should, happen.”

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Doctors treating a brain-damaged baby with a terminal wasting disease would have told his parents that “nothing more could be done”, and their son would have died “peacefully and unremarked”. If there had been a doctor on the other side of the world willing to try an experimental treatment, Charlie’s parents would never have known about it; and “even if they had, they would have deferred to British doctors”. But attitudes have changed, thanks to “medical progress, social media, globalisation and the decline of deference”. These days, people believe in medical miracles, and search the world for them using the internet. Yet at the same time, they distrust the judgement of doctors, and are prepared to go to court to challenge them. And it u