Parents of terminally ill baby fight for his life

London, U.K. (CNN) – The tubes that keep infant Charlie Gard alive will be turned off soon.

His parents’ last hope is to take him to the states for highly experimental medical treatment that is blocked by the British and European courts.

Their last wish refused–to take him home to die.

Chris Gard said, “He’s a little trooper and a little fighter, and he’s still fighting out there and we’re not allowed to fight for him anymore. Our parental rights have been stripped away, we can’t even take our own son away to die, we’re denied that, d’you not think we’ve been put through enough, our final wish.”

Little Charlie Gard was born healthy, but diagnosed the following month with a rare genetic disorder, a form of mitochondrial disease, which has left him, his doctors’ say, with irreversible brain damage.

At the weekend, protests took place in London against the decision to turn off life support. Protestors chanted, “We’re still fighting! Save Charlie Gard!”

And after the Pope sent a message to the parents from the Vatican, saying he was “praying for them in the hope that their desire to accompany and care for their own child until the end will be respected.”

Now Donald Trump has weighed in too. “If we can help little Charlie Gard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so,” he Tweeted.

Charlie’s is a deeply complicated case.

The treatment offered in the U.S., called nucleoside bypass therapy, and it’s never been tested on a strain of the disease as rare as his. And even the U.S. specialist who offered it has said he thinks it’s unlikely it can reverse Charlie’s brain damage.
That’s the reason the British courts ruled the way they did–that Charlie shouldn’t be made the subject of medical experimentation if he doesn’t stand a chance of getting better, that his right to die with dignity must come first.

But that’s not the way his parents see it. Sadly for them, the pleas of a Pope and a president, it’s already too late.

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