Charlie Gard’s Parents Want Him Home to Die

The parents of the terminally ill British child Charlie Gard return to court Tuesday to seek permission to bring their son home from hospital to die, family spokesman Alison Smith-Squire told CNN.
The High Court will decide on the terms and conditions of little Charlie’s death, after a disagreement between the parents and the hospital over where and when he will be taken off life support, Smith-Squire said.
On Monday, Chris Gard and Connie Yates gave up their fight to take 11-month-old Charlie to the US to be treated by Dr. Michio Hirano, a professor of neurology at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York.
London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), which is caring for Charlie Gard, accused Hirano of bringing false hope to the baby’s parents.
In a statement the hospital also expressed surprise that the doctor had a financial interest in the treatment he was offering.
Hirano said a treatment known as nucleoside bypass therapy (NBT) had a small chance of bringing about significant improvement in Charlie’s form of mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome.
“When the hospital was informed that the Professor had new laboratory findings causing him to believe NBT would be more beneficial to Charlie than he had previously opined, GOSH’s hope for Charlie and his parents was that that optimism would be confirmed,” said the GOSH statement.
“It was, therefore, with increasing surprise and disappointment that the hospital listened to the Professor’s fresh evidence to the Court.”
Hirano’s UK lawyer did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
GOSH also accused Hirano of not having read Charlie’s medical or court records before putting forward a treatment.
“Further, GOSH was concerned to hear the Professor state, for the first time, whilst in the witness box, that he retains a financial interest in some of the NBT compounds he proposed prescribing for Charlie. Devastatingly, the information obtained since 13 July gives no cause for optimism. Rather, it confirms that whilst NBT may well assist others in the future, it cannot and could not have assisted Charlie.