BREAKING NEWS

Charlie Gard, baby at center of UK hospital dispute, dies

By REUTERS

JULY 28, 2017 20:45

Updated: JULY 28, 2017 20:56

LONDON - Charlie Gard, a British baby who became the subject of a bitter dispute between his parents and doctors over whether he should be taken to the United States for experimental treatment, has died, the Daily Mail newspaper's website said on Friday.

The 11-month-old baby suffered from an extremely rare genetic condition causing progressive brain damage and muscle weakness, and his parents' long struggle to save him drew an international outpouring of sympathy.

"Our beautiful little boy has gone, we are so proud of you Charlie," Connie Yates, the baby's mother, was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

Great Ormond Street Hospital, where Charlie had been receiving treatment, had no immediate comment on the Daily Mail report.

After a harrowing legal battle that prompted a global debate over who has the moral right to decide the fate of a sick child, a judge on Thursday ordered that Charlie be moved to a hospice where the ventilator that keeps him alive would be turned off.

Yates and the baby's father Chris Gard had wanted Charlie to undergo a treatment that has never been tried on anyone with his condition before, against the advice of doctors at his London hospital who said it would not benefit him and would prolong his suffering.

Charlie required a ventilator to breathe and was unable to see, hear or swallow.

The case drew comment from US President Donald Trump, who tweeted on July 3 that "we would be delighted" to help Charlie, and from Pope Francis, who called for the parents to be allowed to do everything possible to treat their child.

Britain's courts, after hearing a wealth of medical evidence, ruled that it would go against Charlie's best interests to have the experimental nucleoside therapy advocated by a US professor of neurology, Michio Hirano.

The case prompted heated debate on social media and in the press on medical ethics, and staff at the Great Ormond Street Hospital which treated him received abuse and death threats.

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