In the mother of all face-saving, the London hospital that had originally planned to kill off baby Charlie Gard, "for his own good," has seen the light and decided not to pull the plug.  They will even allow this baby, with his very rare genetic condition, known as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, to be treated with an experimental therapy offered freely from the United States.

"Two international hospitals and their researchers have communicated to us as late as the last 24 hours that they have fresh evidence about their proposed experimental treatment," the hospital said in the statement. "And we believe, in common with Charlie's parents, it is right to explore this evidence."

That wasn't their attitude a week ago, before the protests, the statements from President Trump and Pope Francis, and the general global disgust that a purported place of healing would throw away a baby like so much garbage solely because they had no idea how to treat him and didn't want anyone else to treat him, either.  This hospital under its socialized medicine regime was so cold-hearted that in addition to wanting to pull the plug on the child a week ago, it also refused to allow the baby's parents to take their little one home to die with dignity.  They really, really wanted the baby to die in an icy institution instead – under their "care," of course.

It was even more morally repugnant because money was not an object in this case – the parents had raised money to get their baby treated in the States, and there was a willing doctor who would try out a therapy that has helped children with similar genetic mutations, albeit not as severe.  The very idea of trying the therapy on a baby with Gard's condition had a sound theoretical rationale, and even if it had not worked, would yield medical knowledge that could save the next kid with the syndrome.  Yet the London hospital had already made up its mind that the child was a vegetable with no feeling and yet curiously in pain, both rationales for their taking the power steps they did against the baby's parents.  There was also an Italian hospital that offered to take the baby and treat him with dignity which included simply promising to keep him alive as long as possible without pulling the plug.

Against these ameliorating factors, the London hospital didn't particularly care at first.  They must have spent thousands to arm themselves with court victories from Euro courts (run by Europeans from countries with long histories of genocide, assisted suicide, euthanasia, involuntary sterilization, and eugenics) to ensure their legal "right" to kill the baby.  But the hard rule of courts was a complete failure compared to the photos of the baby's devastated, grimly determined parents, which circled the globe.  There is power in imagery, and the images of these parents may have been the element that made the hospital realize that it had a public relations problem and was about to go down in history as "that killer hospital."

The parents were, after all, loving parents and completely willing to devote their lives to caring for their handicapped baby.  In American medicine, it would be unlikely that their wishes would be dismissed, as they had been under Britain's cold, inhuman socialized medical regime.  A typical medical attitude from the U.S., as reported by the New York Times, is here:

But Kenneth Prager, a professor of medicine and director of clinical ethics at Columbia University, who is not involved in the case, argued that the parents' wishes should not be brushed aside. The evidence on pain is unclear, he said. "Unless the parents are abusive, I think it is dangerous for society to arrogate to itself the power to override parental wishes and have the child die when they are clearly loving parents willing to expend time and resources to help their child," he said.

The whole picture goes to show the massive gap between pinched little Eurotrash attitudes toward health care, with all its finiteness, limits, and quests for power, and the imagine-a-miracle approach of the U.S.'s far freer-market health care, with all its innovation, willingness to try new things, and determination to save lives.  Maybe it will be a wake-up call for socialized medicine.  Maybe the hospital changed its mind and didn't want to look hopelessly stupid and out of touch with medical advances, like a Dickensian hellhole of backwardness, as the world's medical miracles marched on.

Maybe this experience will open the London hospital's attitude toward medical miracles.  One can only hope these benighted people have been changed by this tiny little baby whose life they deemed worthless.