Baby Charlie died

Charlie Gard is dead

The eleven-month-old infant suffered from an extremely rare incurable hereditary disease and already had severe irreparable brain damage - only the artificial ventilation and feeding still kept him alive. After judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) gave their British doctors in the legal dispute with the parents, the doctors presented the life-saving machines on Friday. The infant died as a result of severe disabilities. Charlie Gard's inherited disease had damaged his mitochondria, small cell components that sustain the energy balance of all body cells. Therefore, different organs - muscles, liver, and the brain - suffered. There was no chance of healing. The last hope of the parents was an experimental therapy in the USA, which had shown a first success in a similar disease in animal experiments. This therapy, however, is still far from being a standard therapy. It has been tested on a few people, but never before in Charlie's disease. No one can answer whether and how well he had helped. Charlie's parents still wanted to treat their son to this therapy. The doctors in Great Britain refused, with the argument that the trip to the US would have made Charlie even more suffering. They wanted to turn off the machines and complain to have legal certainty. After the dispute had passed through all the institutions in England, the case landed before the European Court of Human Rights. The judgment of the ECtHR raises fundamental ethical questions. It approved the British judgments, which gave the physicians a greater weight than the wish of their parents. Charlie's parents had wanted their son to die at home. But this did not happen, the infant was transferred from hospital to a hospice this week - also against the will of the parents. Mother Connie Yates said, "We just want to be at peace with our son ... no hospital, no lawyers, no dishes, no media - just intense time with Charlie to say goodbye to us" ,