Charlie Gard: Their Son, Your Son, My Son… Our Son

We are all interconnected. What happens to one of us, happens to us all. Once we permit a wrong against one of us, we ask for the possibility in our own life. The case of Charlie Gard is no different.

A child, despite their parents’ wishes, is being mandated to die. The disease is rare and treatment is experimental and no one is known to have beat this disease. But is that any reason to give up? No, it is precisely the reason to try all the more. This child and future children depend on it.

The courts and hospital claim “significant harm” will befall the child in this experimental treatment and that death is inevitable. All this about a disease so rare less than 20 cases are known. How can they know? Many diseases were once considered incurable until some experimental treatment proved otherwise.

I also ask, what is the greatest harm that can befall a person this side of eternity? Would it not be death? It doesn’t make sense then that Charlie would be forced into the greatest harm while his parents are prevented from trying to stop it.

If Charlie’s death mandate is fulfilled, we must all be careful. Where does it stop? As a great humanitarian once said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King, Jr