{"id":81676,"date":"2017-08-05T09:09:25","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T09:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/charlie-gards-life-became-soap-opera-clinician\/"},"modified":"2017-08-05T09:09:25","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T09:09:25","slug":"charlie-gards-life-became-soap-opera-clinician","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/charlie-gards-life-became-soap-opera-clinician\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie Gard&#8217;s life became &#8216;soap opera&#8217;: clinician"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<p>A clinician who treated Charlie Gard, the terminally-ill British baby who died last month, said Saturday his short life became a soap opera fuelled by President Donald Trump and the pope.\n                                <\/p>\n<p>Gard&#8217;s plight drew world attention and sparked a debate about medical ethics<\/a>, as his parents fought a lengthy legal battle to allow him to be taken to the United States for treatment of a rare genetic condition<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>London&#8217;s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) wanted to remove his life support, and some staff received death threats.<\/p>\n<p>But one GOSH clinician, writing anonymously in The Guardian newspaper, said they had a &#8220;legal and moral obligation<\/a>&#8221; to say &#8220;enough is enough&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Like all of the staff who work in our unit, I loved this child to bits. But it got to the point where there was nothing more we could do,&#8221; the health worker wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Gard died in a hospice on July 29, one week short of his first birthday.<\/p>\n<p>His case drew sympathy from many including Trump and Pope Francis, while 350,000 people signed a petition demanding he be allowed to receive experimental treatment in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Parts of the media and some members of the public turned a poorly baby&#8217;s life into a soap opera<\/a>,&#8221; the clinician wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The clinician said the case had an impact on other families at the hospital, with parents anxious medical staff might not do the right thing for their child.<\/p>\n<p>Gard was born on August 4 last year with a rare form of mitochondrial disease that causes progressive muscle weakness<\/a>, including in key organs such as the heart.<\/p>\n<p>The case triggered debate about whether parents or the state should have a final say on a child&#8217;s wellbeing and whether a child&#8217;s fate should be settled in a courtroom.\n                                                                <\/p>\n<p class=\"news-relevant\">\n                                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"toolsicon ic-rel\" src=\"https:\/\/b98584f181.site.internapcdn.net\/tmpl\/v5\/img\/1x1.gif\" width=\"14\" height=\"16\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n                                        <b>Explore further:<\/b><br \/>\n                                        Terminally-ill British baby Charlie Gard dies<\/a>\n                                    <\/p>\n<footer class=\"post-floor clearfix\">\n                                    <!-- rating --><\/p>\n<p>                                                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"toolsicon icon-fbck\" src=\"https:\/\/b98584f181.site.internapcdn.net\/tmpl\/v5\/img\/1x1.gif\" width=\"12\" height=\"12\" alt=\"feedback\" \/><br \/>\n                                                feedback to editors<br \/>\n                                            <\/a><\/p>\n<section class=\"copyright\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t                                                \u00a9 2017 AFP<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A clinician who treated Charlie Gard, the terminally-ill British baby who died last month, said Saturday his short life became a soap opera fuelled by President Donald Trump and the pope. Gard&#8217;s plight drew world attention and sparked a debate about medical ethics, as his parents fought a lengthy legal battle to allow him to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}