Back in February I had written a post about Charlotte Wyatt, a severely disabled young child in Great Britain. At issue was the fact her doctors were seeking a court order to discontinue her naso-gastric feedings and end her life, because she had a viral lung infection they didn’t think would get better. It did get better and Charlotte remains alive. Her parents did not want this action and they brought the plight to our attention. Now, Charlotte’s parents have separated and I guess over in Britain this means the child must go to a foster home (how backwards is THAT?)…anyway today I got a couple comments for that post from the beginning of the year and I saw this comment, left in March.
Why I didn’t catch this before is beyond me.
Make no mistake about IT, I AM PISSED AT THIS FUCKING IGNORANT REPULSIVE AND VILE SNOT:
From comments:
The first thing to say is that clearly nobody gains by Charlotte continuing to live: not the parents who have to go through this, not the doctors or the society that has to pay them, and certainly not Charlotte. I think they should simply give her an overdose of morphine and be done with it.
I believe that anyone who is severely disabled enough that they will never be able to support themselves or take a meaningful part in society has no business going on living. I believe that adults with dsabling conditions have a moral obligation to commit suicide, and that anyone who WISHES to commit suicide for whatever reason should be able to get asistance in doing so.
March 15th, 2006 | # |Edit This
Michael Whoeverthefuckthouis, you are entitled to your own beliefs. We all are. But to use the fact that a society has to pay for the care of this child, to claim that her parents should not have to go through this is morally repulsive and selfish. I would not be the least bit surprised to know that you are a liberal thinking person. You are not the person to judge who can and cannot be allowed to live- nor are you in any position to pass a judgement as to whether a disabled child has a meaningful life.
Not too many disabled people are fully able to participate in society. Does that make them any less important than anyone else?
To you, it does. You’re a pompous, arrogant, unloving, non-compassionate, selfish disgusting person.
To say that people with disabilties have no business being alive, as well as a moral obligation to end their lives is pretty GODlike of you.
THAT’s THE PART you don’t get: Life counts. Every life. NO LIFE IS A BUSINESS. Each of us is given a life to live and some of us are not as fortunate as others. The humane thing to do is take care of one another, not kill one another.
Go to hell you bastard.
Don't Mess With Me.
That commenter would have gone far in 1930s Germany “civil service”.
Amen, Raven… as a guy who works with kids with all different kinds of disability, I’m here to say that every life has merit–every life has value; with the possible exception of Michael whoeverthefuckheis.
Michael Whoeverthefuckthouis must be brain dead which is very close to current thinking in the EU.
Every minute of every life is important.
Seth, this jerkoffbecausenoonewilldoitwithim is a piece of work. Yes he would have fit right in with the Nazi plan.
Asswipe.
Leo- I didn’t know you worked with disabled kids. We’ll have to share stories someday.
I guess we see things differently than those who don’t deal with this population on a daily basis. I see kids with the most devastating conditions smile, laugh, play, communicate, manipulate LOL– IOW, be humans who have a mind and a conscience…in spite of the DX of being brain dead or whatever. I love how people assume these kids are in pain, are in some state of suspended animation and who aren’t ALIVE. It breaks my heart too, that people have this misconception.
Yes cowboy…that is PERFECT==> these idiOts are themselves brain dead- perhaps the Culture of Death has caught up with them in Europe. It’s not up to me or you or this dipshit to decide who lives and who doesn’t. We’re not God, and we have NO BUSINESS making his choices.
I am a foster carer in the U.K.We have a child with us who has a profound physical and learning difficulty, is tube fed and has high medical needs. This child was not able to be cared for by the parents due to the enourmity of needs.However, there are many foster carers out there who will love these children, fight thier corner for them, give them what every child has a right to have…….love and a family. Please try not to think that by being fostered, a backward step would be taken.The alternative is residential care……now that IS a backward step.
Fostering with a well trained and lovoing foster parent ir paretns is not a vile or backwards form of child care. You may also like to know that whilst Charlotte’s parents fought all the way to prevent the ‘right to die’ order being made by the courts in GB, they have now separated (January 2006) and since then mum has only visted her precious child three times and dad is also a highly infrequent visitor. Precious as long as they don’t have to cope witht e day to day reality of life with a profoundly disabled child?
I have no problem with foster care- I was just shocked to see the child need it because of her parents’ split.
I didn’t know all the details…I thought, in error, that this was a cultural thing in GB. That’s what I get for not living there.
Shame on Charlotte’s parents for not having much to do with her now..although I have to ask- why did they make such a big deal about Charlotte in February of 2006 when they a) broke up in January b) have only seen her 3 times yet this isn’t what their blog states????
Please explain to this poor unenlightened brit what options there are in the US to look after a profoundly disabled child in a situation where:
the parents split up, are both unemployed, the father has threatened suicide, the mother hasn’t seen her daughter in months and has 3 other children to look after. fantastic prospects for Charlotte ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=410725&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=picbox&ct=5
In America a child like Charlotte would be put into a foster home IF they could find the medical supports required for her care. If not, she would come to a pediatric healthcare facility like the place I work for.
While a disabled child is placed here or in a foster home, the home situation is assessed and examined; often times the parents have no support and help; they cannot keep a job or even take care of their other kids.
Finding nurses and aides who will come into the home is the goal and it is very often achieved in the US. 24 hours a day– 7 days a week. It is much less costly than placement at a facility such as where I work. These kids go to school (as required by our laws) and they have a 1:1 nurse or aide with them. Their educational goals are quite different obviously- and much of this pertains to physical therapies and “enjoyment” activties. Sensory stimulation is a big thing as well as community intergretion. It works- even with the most profoundly disabled kids-those with only half a brain, literally, manage to smile, laugh, eat orally, have some form of communicating with others (usually through eye or mouth movements, and the use of hands or even a finger).
Parents of disabled children divorce at a very high rate.
The care of the child takes a lot of time and it is stressful- I see this all the time. With the proper supports in place it doesn’t have to be this way.
Just because her parents split up is NO reason to assume Charlotte should not live and I hope no one here is even suggesting that.
as far as i am aware, charlott is still being cared for in a state funded uk hospital. Every body fought over the court cases with charlottes interests at heart - not funding. THe doctors and nurses who care for her are very aware of the pain and discomfort they subject her to when they ’save’ her from the brink. I’m proud to be in a country where the state values a life and I do believe that not all lives are meant to be prolonged just because we can.
So much rubbish is spouted about the charlotte case that the truth has to be heard. I am a pediatrician working in UK and am saddened when this story keeps coming up. On Charlotte’s website they repeatedly say that the NHS has failed her. Lets go back to the beggining when she was born very premature and sick. The fact she was still alive when it came to court I think is down to the hard working doctors, at least in part? No God given miracles here. Now, it was never an issue to remove NG feeding Raven, nice lies there, the point of the court case was that if she should deteriroate to the point of requiring to go on the life support machine, then she shouldn’t be put on it. I don’t want to talk about the rights and wrongs of this except to say this decision when agreed between parents and doctors happens all around the world, sometimes that being no. The doctors were well in their rights to suggest this, I can’t comment wehter they were right to push it this much since they have got bad publicity but NONE of us work there so I dunno. The end of the day since they first went to court she has never been so unwell to require ventilation (again in part to the doctors excellent care, oh god forbid!) so its not been an issue. Lets consider the parents as really they have not had charlottes best interest at heart either. They had a further 2 children after charlotte was born despite all their energies being channeled to her, responsible? Having a handicapped child of course is stressful and does lead to divorce you are right but hang on, they have never had her home, oh again due to failing and evil NHS not caring about her, well who the fuck do you think has been doing this. Families breka up all the time, but now they are saying neither parent can look after her now she’s well enough to go home. *clap clap* How loving you really are and selfish. Its beeneasy to fight for her moan about NHS sau how much you love her when you’re safe in the knowledge you don’t have to do any of the work. Now its an issue you shirk your responsibilities - no reason why she can’t live with one of them, the NHS (oh what evil!) would provide all the support the parent would need to have a home yet its still not possible. The best thing for charlotte and clearly the hospital is to have a home so it seems odd she can’t do unless the parents are refusing to have her. Still don’t worry mummy and daddy the evil establishment you have fought for so long will do it because in fact its YOU who have failed her. Its very easy for parenst to fight for their children but we see it time and time again parents say oh if i knew how difficult it would be and how much he/she suffers (when they realise for real on taking him/her home) they change their view on things. Its just a shame Charlottes parents didn’t at least have a try.
You’re an MD? I can tell by your spelling and demeanor and expert analysis. (NOT).
Good riposte. Anything constructive to say?
I feel sad for Charlotte when I heard that her parents have split up and cant be bothered anymore, after fighting for all those years. It will be very hard to re-house Charlotte, and her hospital have been quite literally ‘holding the baby’ until things can be sorted out. I know from personal experience how hard it is - my son was born at 24 weeks 6 days, with a 20% chance of survival. It was almost like a ‘disclaimer’, so that if things happened or they messed up on his treatment, they could wash their hands of him. Fortunately, my son was strong enough to fight off Sepsis, Pneumonia and Respiratory System Virus along with coping with being so premature. We had to fight for him, but still work along with the doctors. It was hard at times but we did alot of research on the medications they were giving him (they thought he had epilepsy and put him on a strong anti-epileptic drug, we showed them that the high dose he was on could cause fits, they acknowledged and discontinued it), we had to fight against them wanting to turn off his ventilator at least 6 times. Darren Wyatt’s problem was that he had literal fights with doctors which involved security and Police being called. I know it can be very emotional, but you have got to keep it together. The Wyatts were quite happy on Social Security (the dole, we call it here in the UK), with no intention of getting a job. My wife and I were in full time work during the 7 months of hell we endured (granted my wife spent all her maternity leave at the hospital with our son). It’s not about comparisons, but if we had as much time on our hands we would use the time better. We have eventually been able to get carers to look after our son while we work 3 days a week, and the rest of the time we spend with him. He has just come out of hospital after spending the first year of his life there.
Yes, the NHS will try and fob you off from time to time, but as parents you have to be united and fight for your child. We managed to get them to help us with carers, and things are much better.:mrgreen:
I hope the Wyatts can sort things out, for Charlotte’s sake. I know what Foster Homes are like (I was fostered at 3), and it ain’t pretty.:(
I would most certainly like to be present when Michael commits suicide, as he will surely become old and disabled at some point and time. Life and death is no one’s business but the persons involved. Personally my special needs grandchild is the most precious thing on life and is certainly no burden to any of us. Thank God our government gave her to us instead of sentencing her to a sure death.
Surely Michael this bit of opinion will spark just one more moment of hatred in your life and make you day more pleasant, as you surely have a need for it.
Really, every child is a burden and a drain, disabled or not. Should we then kill them all? Of course not.
Poor Charlotte, I hope she can go home to her father someday.
:cry:i’m very sad with allllll this…but i know there’ll be a MIRACLE….and everything happen for a reason..
I meandered to this blog while reading about the Church of England’s recommendation that in extreme circumstances very sick babies should be allowed to die.
I wonder about all this sometimes. I mean, very very ill babies may be born without brains entirely, anacephally I think it’s called, just with the brain stem.
So what makes a baby an individual? Is it perfection of human form? I think it’s okay to consider anacephalic children brain absent (thusly brain dead,) and to donate organ from them even though they look like normal children except for their skulls. I don’t consider someone who is brain absent to be an invidual.
Is it having an individual set of genes? A teratoma is when a developing baby becomes a mass of cancer. A teratoma has its own genes, but no human form. We never try to keep tumors with human genes alive. Sometimes people will be formed from embryos merged together, and so a single person will have two sets of genes. We do not consider those individuals to be two people.
I dunno. Cases like this make me think of extremes and then I try to define what it is we feel worthy of saving. Thanks for the blog and the discussion is produces.
According to Gazaah, it is ok to kill Michael as he is obviously “brain absent” as well.
What makes someone an individual is that they have life. Life is not how smart you are. Life is not how many fingers and toes you have or don’t have (or any other organ). Life is not being born free of disease. Life is not coming forth from the womb of a mother who is financially capable of caregiving. Sometimes people are blessed with many years and sometimes others never get the chance to even enter this world, but they, and everyone in between, have still have it.
Children have been born with severe health problems that have cost parents, health care systems and taxpayers millions of dollars. Some of these children do not survive, but they have not done so by our lack of intervention. Some of these children do survive to be healthy, functioning adults who are able to give back to that society that once gave to them. Some of these chidren do survive, but their only contribution to society is the joy they bring and the love they have for those around them caring for them and praying for them. But consider this…so have children been born perfectly healthy who have used their healthy brains and healthy bodies to make poor choices in their healthy lives that have ALSO cost their families (and the families of those who their choices affect), health care systems and taxpayers millions of dollars. Some of those people will learn from their poor choices and eventually contribute back to society. Unfortunately, many of these people will never contribute to society (at the continued cost of society), and, while we may have varying opinions as to how their choices should be dealt with, we do not question that they have life.
Life does not have a dollar amount. Life does not come with guarantees. Life is not self-generated, it is given. And life IS what is IS…LIFE! It is not up to us to define it. It is only up to us to protect it.
Raven,
I’ve randomly come across your site, and I have to say that whilst I believe in having a right to live, you are incredibly biased in your views. Which is fine. That’s what the web’s for. But making personal slurs on someone (the paediatrician) who has a valid comment is just childish. And given your childish response (NOT!?), I’m not sure that anyone should pay attention to your ramblings.
It’s very hard to disentangle religious beliefs from your world view point (which is fine most of the time), but these teachings were made 1000’s of years ago when doctors didn’t have these abilities. We’re playing God every time we save a premature baby - just remember that.
Yup, I expect you will find a typo or something in my email and say that, hell I don’t understand, but I hope the next person the site has more of an open mind about the subject.
Jack…Yes, 1000’s of years ago doctor’s didn’t have the “abilities”, meaning technical advancements and pharmaceutical medicine, that we have today, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t use all the resources and “abilities” at their disposal to try and save a child. I’m sure they did everything they could with what they had to try and save every premature life. Doing all that can be done to save a life doesn’t make a person God–it only shows that they value the gift of life.
Raven - I can see you’re the kind of gal who believes there’s nothing like a good ole two-fisted personal attack to stimulate a bit of debate.
So I’m sure you won’t mind if I stick it to the father of this unfortunate child. What a wanker! Having kicked up all of this fuss and drawn the world’s attention to himself and his family, I now read that neither he nor his wife find themselves able to look after their poor sickly baby, who is now at the mercy of the state. Mrs W has apparently lost interest, according to the Daily Mail, perhaps not surprisingly considering that she has 3 other kids to look after on her own.
Mr W claims to be in a position to look after Charlotte “if only I had the right support”, for which read: a minature hospital, complete with staff, installed in the comfort of my own home. Complete with full benefits and 10 cans of beer a day for himself, naturally.
However, what truly appalls me is that these irresponsible people went on to have yet more children after Charlotte (taking his total to EIGHT kids by various mothers); the next baby - surprise surprise - was also premature and suffered from similar complications.
Those who have had a proper look at the facts, as opposed to a few half-understood snippets, will wonder at the size of the legal bill they have run up. Whilst there is no doubt that the case needed to be put before a judge for a decision, I can tell you that the costs were unnecessarily inflated by the parents (or to be more accurate, the father) arguing to the max every point that was there to be argued no matter how irrelevant - see for instance the recent judgment of the Court of Appeal regarding the apportionment of costs in this case in which the Wyatts were severely criticised for wasting a huge amount of time and money on a completely academic point about whether the legal aid board should pick up the tab for the argument.
To cap it all, I read that Mrs Wyatt has had a hysterectomy - she at least realises that it’s time to stop having babies - but Mr Wyatt is free to carry on bringing yet more sickly children without the means to support them, as well as continuing to waste the state’s resources by continuing to occupy a family home (on the taxpayer’s coin naturally) which he no longer needs.
As for you Raven, I’m a Brit and I don’t at all care for the racist overtones of your post. Your country has a shitty pay-as-you-go healthcare system, so you’re in no position to start blaring about the conditions elsewhere. The point you and other like minded folk miss every time is that healthcare IS a limited resource, and Republicans are always the first to bleat about the size of the bill for these services. I don’t say it SHOULD BE a limited resource, it just is, as you well know.
So, in the face of ever increasing demand for healthcare, there’s never going to be enough to go around. One person’s treatment is another person’s hard luck. Any sane person would recognise that and concentrate on trying to get the best bang for the buck instead of indulging in half-assed schlock. The doctors are best placed to make an assessment about when the point is reached where enough is enough, far better than you or I. The only reason this case ever hit the headlines is because Mr Asshole Wyatt thought he knew better. A classic case of exercising rights without a thought to the responsibilities that go with them.
Now, since you seem to value posts solely on the basis of the number of spelling mistakes they contain, let’s see you pick spelling holes in THIS post, asshole.
Taxanass- FUCK YOU. You’re an arrogant scum who deserves no place in life or heaven after. I hope you get yours.
What a marvellously intelligent and articulate response.
I think you’ll find that “scum” (like bread) is uncountable and thus can’t take the singular. I suggest you learn to speak English properly before attempting to insult me.
Oh, one other thing. Placental abruption (the cause of Charlotte’s premature birth) is most often caused by trauma, such as a blow to the stomach. Interesting to note the complaints of wife beating now being made by Mrs Wyatt.
You still think Mr Wyatt’s a nice guy?
How amazing that no pro life blogger has ever mentioned that these “parents” are unfit, irresponsible, unwilling and unable to actually care for this child they brought in to the world.
The parents aren’t christian.
The parents aren’t moral.
Unwilling to allow Gods will to be done they demanded that doctors interfere.
The doctors realised this child wouldn’t have loving and caring parents and that the child had multiple and severe problems- possibly beginning when “dad” punched or kicked “mom”- and the doctors didn’t want to play God.
Charlotte needed the love of a MOTHER and a FATHER, the will of God and the talent of many medical professionals before she would have the chance to have a life without suffering, sadness, and being alone and lonely.
God had a plan. But Charlotte wasn’t allowed to follow Gods heavenly plan because PEOPLE interfered between Charlotte and God. People interfered with tubes, machines, potions, elixirs, pills, salves, ointments, cremes and oxygen from a can. People interfered in the courts. People interfered with money.
How much money did you people send to mom and dad?
I bet they enjoyed the pro life money train ride as much as the Schindlers are still enjoying theirs.
The Schindler family is paying themselves exhorbitant salaries and perks out of the monies sent to help their daughter. Heard the Schindler foundation made more than 300,000 us dollars last year from contributions. Toss in the money from the book sales and the Schindlers are paying themselves more money than they had ever earned.
Bobby junior used to be a teacher. I bet he never wore suits and had a limo on his teachers salary. What a great opportunist and profiteer- I bet he taught business classes.
Raven you are a sicko that feeds off misery and suffering. Apparently when you can’t get enough misery and suffering in your own life you go looking to share in the suffering and misery of strangers- people you have never met and that you actually KNOW NOTHING ABOUT.
You don’t want to know if what they say is true. You don’t care about the truth. You just want to share in the drama. You just want to share in the suffering and the pain.
You knew nothing of the character, the morals or the HONESTY of the “parents” of Charlotte Wyatt but you sure were ready to be a little cheer leader standing on the sidelines of what should have been a PRIVATE and PERSONAL family matter- except the “parents” were looking for a little cash and a lot of attention (for themselves, not their daughter).
You, Raven, didn’t care about this childs future.
Now the child is going to be a ward of the state. The child will become anonymous and you, Raven, will never know what horrors the child will face as she is passed from one foster family to another- foster families that probably have other disturbed children, possibly violent or possibly abused.
Charlotte will end up a victim at the hands of other victims.
Doesn’t matter though because YOU will never know what kind of “life” Charlotte will have.
To Amazed, Taxonomist, and the supposed “pediatrician” (who really should contemplate the elegance of that most basic grammatical construction; i.e., the paragraph):
All of you miss the point, either because you are foolish, or because you are twisted beyond belief.
The girl has now been born. She lives. Speculation as to the cause of her condition is pointless, as is speculation as to the motives and actions of her admittedly negligent parents. Charlotte’s physicians have determined that her life is so unnecessary and wasted that she should be allowed to die without treatment. I suppose that we should be glad that these mini-Mengeles don’t advocate a more active approach (yet), but the fact that physicians in Great Britain are so uncommitted to saving a child’s life is chilling. (Can this be the same Great Britain that planted the seeds of individual liberty that eventually flowered in America? If so, RUE Britannia).
I also find chilling the astounding reaction by some that Charlotte’s life will result in unspeakable pain and devastating abuse by foster parents, and that therefore, she should be extinguished sooner rather than later. To do so would ease somebody’s tax burden, I surmise from reading the posts of our Brit friends on this site….
Well, Charlotte may suffer in the future. Or, she may, within the bounds of her condition, thrive. I can’t say, because I am neither a sideshow fortune teller nor a time traveler from the future. I can say that she will be alive, though. It may sound trite or cliched, but there are no guarantees in life. Even if Charlotte were to live for thirty years and curse every day of her existence, it is not an excuse for her to be thrown to the side of the road now by well-meaning (but naive) people or by sick and cruel “survival-of-the-fittest” types who balance a living human against costs to themselves like an accountant balances a ledger.
If we can’t be 100% certain of this little girl’s future (and we can’t), isn’t it better to err on the side of life?
Please consider this before you reflexively spit your venom at Raven.
Horrified, I can assure you that I’m neither foolish nor twisted beyond belief. Actually I believe it’s you who are missing the point and so I expect you won’t mind if I instead spit some venom at you, since you’ve been less than polite about me in your post. To elaborate:
“Charlotte’s physicians have determined that her life is so unnecessary and wasted that she should be allowed to die without treatment”.
This is just utter rubbish. If it were just you, I probably would’t bother taking you to task, but unfortunately there seem to be large numbers of people like you who clearly don’t know the facts, or worse distort them in favour of the pro life cause, a la Raven and her good ole’ buddies.
If you had taken the trouble to read the court rulings in this unhappy case, you would know that this business has almost nothing in common with the Schiavo case. This is NOT a DNR case, repeat, NOT a DNR case, despite the nonsense that you may read on the family website and elsewhere.
Also, this case is not and never has been about money, the cost of Charlotte’s treatment has always been met by the NHS and it always will be. End of.
Charlotte’s doctors have in fact done everything in their power to keep Charlotte alive and the fact that she IS still alive (though not well) is 100% a testament to their skill and dedication. Her parents can claim no credit at all for that, in fact there is a suspicion that Mr Wyatt may in fact have caused or contributed to her condition in the first place and they have certainly interfered in her treatment.
The facts are all set out in the various legal judgments in this case, whihc are in the public domain and should be essential reading for anyone who claims to have an opinion about all of this.
What happened was that, as Charlotte became more and more ill, relations between the family and the hospital broke down. Mr Wyatt apparently blamed the doctors for Charlotte’s condition. He made threats to hospital staff and at one point the parents had to be banned from seeing Charlotte unless accompanied by a security guard.
It has to be emphasised that Mr Wyatt was never prepared to repeat any of his allegations in Court, in fact his barrister made it clear that the family accepted that the doctors had done everything that they could and that her treatment had been exemplary.
In that sort of atmosphere it’s obviously impossible to make a joint decision about what’s best, so there is a well-established legal mechanism which hospitals use to deal in advance with any expected disagreements about patient care. It was the hospital who took the matter to Court, not the Wyatts. The Wyatts got legal aid and have not had to pay anything out of their own pockets.
The doctors said that they felt that a time might soon come when Charlotte would become even more ill and need rescuscitation to keep her alive. The Wyatts had already made it clear that they wanted Charlotte to be kept alive at any cost, even if that meant using treatment which (the doctors feared) might be cruel, inhumane and against conscience.
The pro-lifers such as Raven, and I presume you, love to bandy the “DNR” label about as if some death sentence had been passed. The court order did no such thing. What it did was to protect the hospital and allow the doctors to carry on doing their best for Charlotte without having the parents interfering, particularly at critical moments.
Several of the doctors said that they might well have a go at rescuscitation in some circumstances, but they all agreed that there would come a point where it would be cruel to do more. Even the parents accepted that this point might be reached at some stage; their behaviour throughout unfortunately demonstrates that they are the wrong people to ask at the time when a hard-headed decision has to be made about what to do.
Unfortunately it’s clear from your post that you believe (apparently in common with so many people who clearly have never been put in such a hard place themselves) that any price is fair so long as life is continued. You clearly have no real experience of such things, otherwise you wouldn’t spout this nonsense. You clearly don’t understand that there are some things which are worse than death. You need to read the Court judgments which in places are reminiscent of the tale of Frankenstein’s monster, then perhaps you would understand.
All of that said, my own view (which you conveniently distort in your post) is that it is right to count the cost, because what the pro-lifers conveniently forget is that we live in a world where resources are limited - that means that if they are used in one way, they cannot be used in another way. They have to be prioritised. Nobody likes to hear this made explicit, particularly where money is concerned, but it is an absolute fact of life and it does not just apply to money, it applies to everything.
I don’t object that Charlotte has the cost of her medical needs met out of public funds, that’s provided for under the NHS rules and I have no problem with her getting whatever care her doctors say she needs and which can be afforded by the local trust.
What I do object to are:
a) the waste of public money on unnecessary legal costs (about which see my earlier post)
b) the fact that the parents appear to have put maximal participation in Charlotte’s court case, and the need to “win” at all costs, above the needs of their other children, who now are going to be brought up in a broken home, apparently with a convicted sex offender for a step-dad (see recent Daily Mail articles).
Perhaps the family would have broken up anyway, but this business cannot have helped and it clearly split the family down the middle. Which is why most of my venom is directed at Mr Wyatt and anyone else who thinks that he’s done anything worthwhile in the past three years, not especially at Raven or at you, good sir/madam.
As for the “horrors of a foster family”, I disagree with Amazed on this point. Actually I think it’s the best thing that could have happened to Charlotte. At least now she has a chance of living out her life in peace and anonymity instead of being held up in front of the media like some grotesque mascot.
50 years ago, this situation would not have occurred, Why? For the simple reason that medical science was not as good as it is today, and babies born very prematurely, or with severe medical problems, would have dies within weeks or months of birth. It is Natural Selection that only the strong survive to procreate the species, be it human, fish or fowl.
Whilst everybody wants to save a child from death, are we not maling a rod for our own back?
PAul
Really, Paul! How is the survival of this little girl to be considered a scourge to you? You’re just a tad over-sensitive and touchy.
And as for that perhaps mythical Natural Selection…well I won’t stop to argue the merits of Darwin (or perhaps more to the point, of Nietzsche) with you, but I’ll just point out that Natural Selection, must, in your world-view, be the force that has enabled humans to develop to the stage of being able to help and look after such sad little cases as Charlotte. Perhaps it’s NS that has enabled us to develop spiritual qualities such as love and compassion, without bwhich we couldn’t survive…even poor mad Nietzsche received charitable treatment when he was no longer viable, a point at which his own doctrines, had they been acted on by his carers, would have ensured his destruction…