The lesson of little Charlie Gard

Abstract

We are facing the legal controversy of Charlie Gard, a 10-monthold baby, affected by mitochondrial deterioration syndrome, to which three courts have ruled to be sedated and deprived of mechanical ventilation as well as feeding and hydration. It has been considered illegitimate any action that would keep him alive, even at the request of the parents to apply an experimental protocol of nucleoside therapies that could save him but that has been considered futile. It seems a case of thanatological cruelty where the authorities seem to be in a hurry to end their suffering, silencing the parents’ hopes. It is not the therapy or the disease that we want to discuss, how much when and how to end the life of a helpless human being. Some principles are exposed: Incurability should not be confused with intractability. Everyone has the right to be served. Right that resides in its human dignity. Feeding and hydration should not be considered as therapy. The patient is never an anonymous individual object of therapies. There is no justification for a form of passive euthanasia in favor of which the English courts and the European Court of Human Rights have opted.