Charlie's Army: The people fighting for Charlie Gard
They say they're helping a terminally ill baby, but critics argue campaigners have other interests
Charlie Gard's parents may have ended their legal battle to take their terminally-ill baby to the US for experimental medical treatment but for those in "Charlie's Army" the fight goes on.
Campaigners chanted: "Shame on you judge" and: "Shame on Gosh" (Great Ormond Street Hospital) as Chris Gard and Connie Yates withdrew the legal challenge on Tuesday, the BBC reported.
Since April, when the High Court ruled Charlie's life support could be switched off, campaigners have helped raise £1.3m, insisting the 11-month-old baby could be saved.
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Charlies has encephalomyopathy mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, a rare condition which means he cannot transfer energy to his muscles, kidneys and brain. Sufferers usually die in infancy.
Demonstrators have been a permanent fixture outside London's Royal Courts of Justice, where the case has gone through hearing after hearing. According to the Daily Mirror, one man flew from Scotland to attend on Tuesday.
Charlie's parents are in court today hoping for a ruling to allow them to take their son home for his last days rather than allow him to die in a hospice or hospital.
Campaigners have posted supportive messages on Facebook, where Charlie's Army has 62,465 supporters, and Twitter at a rate of one every second, The Sun reports.
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Doctors say they have always done their best for the child, but many protesters feel intense distrust – and even hatred – towards Great Ormond Street and its staff.
"The doctors are lying," one told The Independent. Another said: "They are murderers, aren't they?"
Great Ormond Street has also received thousands of abusive messages and at one point had to call in police to investigate the "unacceptable" harassment of staff, the paper adds.
Charlie's case has also attracted support from US pro-life anti-abortionists. "This is a matter for God," the head of one group said, while Catherine Glenn Foster, of Americans United for Life, told a press conference: "I am Charlie. We all are Charlie," reports conservative news site Breitbart. She also visited Charlie's parents in London and tweeted a picture of herself kissing Charlie.
Her motives, and the motives of others like her, have been questioned.
"Isn't the sad reality that pro-lifers like yourself are jumping on a bandwagon here and that Charlie is now being used as a sort of ideological football which is a horrendous state of affairs, isn't it?" Cathy Newman asked her on Channel 4.
In addition, US broadcaster Fox News used the case to criticise the NHS.
"They want him to die. Apparently that's OK with the state-run National Health Service (NHS), which is always looking for ways to cut costs," commentator Cal Thomas wrote.
US doctor Michio Hirano, who testified that his experimental drugs could help Charlie, has also come under attack from Great Ormond Street, which said he hadn't examined Charlie or read all his records and was giving his parents false hope.
Hospital lawyers added that the medic had a financial interest in some of the drugs he proposed to use, the Daily Mail reports.
Hirano was referenced in the most recent website post from Charlie's parents, with Gard and Yates saying their son "had had the potential to be a normal, healthy little boy" if the doctor had been allowed to act earlier.
However, British medical experts disagree. IVF pioneer Professor Robert Winston said: "I have to say I think it's really rather wicked to give the parents the idea that somehow… had this little baby been treated earlier, it would have made a difference. That is not our experience with this sort of disease."
Perhaps the most moving commentary about the case comes from Ian Birrell, who has a disabled child.
"This was a case with no winners: not Charlie, not his parents, not the doctors, not the hospital," he wrote in The Guardian.
Birrell also criticised the relationship between the hospital and the parents, lamenting the global "circus" around a "tragic situation". He added: "There was clearly a breakdown in communication between parents and medical staff at Great Ormond Street hospital. This spiralled into a very public confrontation, abused by some outside players for their own, self-serving purposes."
As for Charlie's Army, they have vowed to continue fighting - although they may learn the hard lesson that all soldiers do: that not all battles can be won.
Charlie Gard parents' sadness that he cannot die at home
30 June
Chris Gard and Connie Yates posted a moving video on YouTube saying they've been denied their "last wish" to have their son, Charlie Gard, die at home.
Instead, the couple says the life support machine will be turned off in a hospital later today.
Now their son is to receive only palliative care, Gard and Yates asked to bring him home to prevent his death occurring in a hospice or hospital.
In the video, they claim they offered to pay for transportation, but the medical team wanted the ten-month-old to stay in Great Ormond Street Hospital.
"We begged them today to give us this weekend," says Yates, adding the family wanted to say goodbye.
Gard says the day will now be about "spending [these] last few precious hours with him".
The video follows a decision of the European Court of Human Rights rejecting the parents' appeal to allow Charlie to undergo experimental medical treatment in the US, ending the couple's lengthy legal battle.
A succession of doctors and UK courts found the child's best interests demanded a dignified death, rather than prolonging a poor quality of life arising from a terminal medical condition – one in which Charlie cannot see, hear, cry or swallow.
Baby Charlie Gard to stay on life support during European court appeal
20 June
Baby Charlie Gard will remain on life support in London until the European Court of Human Rights decide whether he should undergo an experimental medical treatment in the US.
His parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, made their final appeal to the Strasbourg court after their UK Supreme Court challenge failed. It is unclear when judges will begin their deliberations on whether to turn off the ten-month-old's life support, but doctors have been told to continue providing him with treatment for three more weeks, Sky News reports.
The debate over Charlie's life is about balancing the moral dilemma of parental rights versus the state's duties to protect the wellbeing of children.
"Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London said it would be kinder to move the baby to an end-of-life care regime," The Independent says.
However, his parents want to be allowed to take him to a hospital in the US, where they hope he can be treated.
Charlie has mitochondrial depletion syndrome, which means he cannot hear, move, cry or swallow. His lungs only function with the aid of a machine and doctors say he has irreversible brain damage. His parents have crowdfunded £1.3m for his treatment in the US
Yates told the High Court in a past trial that she "would do anything" for Charlie and that he was a "prisoner" in the hospital, The Sun reports.
However, in May, judges at the Court of Appeals upheld the opinion of specialists at Great Ormond Street Hospital, who say the boy has no chance of survival, the BBC reports.
Charlie Gard: Parents take legal battle for US treatment to Supreme Court
1 June
The parents of a severely disabled boy who want to take him to the US for experimental treatment will now take their legal battle to the UK's highest court after doctors ruled his life support should be turned off.
Nine-month-old Charlie Gard was due to be moved to palliative care at midnight on Wednesday, the BBC reports, but the Supreme Court has ordered that he remain on life support until the court sits to make its decision on 8 June.
The Supreme Court is the last chance for Charlie's parents Chris Gard and Connie Yates to keep their son alive.
Last week the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's ruling that doctors should be allowed to move Charlie to palliative care.
Charlie was born with mitochondrial depletion syndrome, a condition that affects the DNA responsible for converting food into energy to power the body's cells.
He is currently kept alive on an artificial ventilator at London's Great Ormond Street hospital.
In April, barristers representing Great Ormond Street testified to the High Court that Charlie's incurable disorder meant he was unable to see, hear, move or make a noise.
Keeping Charlie on life support would only "prolong the process of dying", doctors said, arguing that palliative care was the ethical option.
Gard and Yates told High Court judge Mr Justice Francis that they had raised £1.3m online to take their son to the US for a treatment called nucleoside therapy. They urged him to grant their son his "one shot".
However, Mr Justice Francis agreed with Great Ormond Street's assessment that the extent of Charlie's brain damage was so severe and irreversible that any treatment would be "potentially painful but incapable of achieving anything positive for him".
Mr Justice Francis said that withdrawing life support was in Charlie's best interests, adding that he made the decision with the "heaviest of hearts".
Gard and Yates sought to overturn the ruling at the Court of Appeal, but Mr Justice McFarlane upheld the decision that taking Charlie to the US would "expose Charlie to harm" with little hope of improving his condition.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments from both sides on Thursday 8 June. If the court agrees to hear the case, a hearing will be set for a later date.