Baby With Rare Genetic Condition Involving Mitochondrial DNA Allowed to Die Against Parents’ Wishes: Ruling
A British judge ruled an infant should be taken off life support, despite his parents’ wishes.
Eight-month-old Charlie Gard suffers from a rare genetic condition and has brain damage, which he will not be able to recover from, reports Medical Xpress. Charlie suffers from mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, which refers to a number of disorders that affect the mitochondria of cells. Mitochondria’s main responsibility are to provide energy to the muscles, kidneys, and brain. Charlie’s parents are both carriers of the faulty gene that leads to this devastating syndrome; however, they did not know this until Charlie was 3 months old.
Read: Right To Die Case: Man With Incurable, But Not Terminal, Multiple System Atrophy Seeks Right To End Life
Charlie’s parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, have about 3 weeks to appeal the high court’s decision, states The Guardian.
The court decision comes after specialists at Charlie’s hospital asked Justice Nicholas Francis to legally allow the baby to die by withdrawing his life support. Francis visited Charlie at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and deemed the infant and his family were under “extraordinary care.”
Charlie's parents hope to take their son to the United States for a treatment trial of nucleoside bypass therapy. Although this therapy has been successful for other patients, it has never been tried on anyone with Charlie's exact form of disease. To fund their efforts, his parents started a GoFundMe page, which has raised over 1.6 million dollars in about 2 months. More than 82,700 people from across the globe have donated.
“We just CAN’T let our baby die when there is something that might help him! We won’t give up on him because he has a rare disease,” Yates wrote on the GoFundMe page. “He deserves a chance and he deserves a life as much as anyone else.”
See also: California Family Fights To Keep Toddler On Life Support After Doctors Declare Him Brain Dead
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