Not Everything British is Best
Lessons from the Charlie Gard Case
Like a younger sister who looks up to her sophisticated big sister, Americans have historically found much to admire about the British. They have a cosmopolitan capital, delightful accents, and a glamorous royal family. But if ever there were a reminder that not everything British is better, it’s been the Charlie Gard case.
On the off chance you haven’t heard about Charlie Gard, he was a little boy born in the UK with an extremely rare disease who was being kept alive at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). His parents raised £1.3 million via GoFundMe.com to bring him to the United States for an experimental treatment that they believed could help him. The hospital sued to remove Charlie from mechanical ventilation on the grounds that the treatment would only prolong his suffering and would not save him. They declared the boy should be allowed to ‘die with dignity,’ and the judge presiding over the case agreed. The Gards lost their subsequent appeal, and — to add insult to injury — were not even allowed to bring their baby home to die.
Charlie died this past Friday, in the sterile atmosphere of a hospice. He didn’t even make it to his first birthday.
There are so many aspects of this story that are extremely disturbing — the abrogation of parental rights, the government’s belief that they had the right to bar their own citizens from leaving the country, and the hospital’s fierce fight to ensure a child died because they believed quality of life was more important than length of life. These issues are all worthy of discussion, but one of the things I found to be deeply disconcerting, to the point of creepiness, was the British reaction to the story.
On the American side of Twitter and discussion boards, the judge’s decision was met with outrage; how dare he decide for the parents that they must watch their child die without doing the utmost to save his life? How could they be forbidden to use their own money to help their child, even if there was only a slight chance that the treatment would help? Many Tweeters discussed the possibility of kidnapping Charlie to bring him to the States; others petitioned President Trump to intercede with the British government on Charlie’s behalf.
The British side of Twitter and online chatter, on the other hand, read like something out of a dystopian novel. Oh, there was also outrage — but it was directed at Charlie’s parents! The parents should never have fought GOSH’s ruling. They should have simply accepted that their son was too sick to help and allowed him to die. What attention seeking, ungrateful people! There they were, dragging the fine institute that had kept their son alive through the mud for their selfish ends.
One particularly bloodless Tweeter remarked that the parents should be grateful to the courts for saving them the money it would have cost had Charlie remained alive. Another passionately declared that the couple should never be allowed to have children again. A third said the Gards should be grateful (there’s that word again) that their request to take him home to die was denied, as they would then have awful memories in their home. When I argued that everyone should be free to deal with their grief as they wished, I was told that what I thought did not matter; The Experts were the ones with the knowledge and experience, and that was that.
How did that happen? How did the British people become so subservient to their government to the point where they accepted the judge’s ruling as if it were G-d’s word?
When you look up to the government to take care of you, you are treating it as a parental figure. And children like to believe that their parents are right.
Take the British National Health Service (NHS), for example. The British love their NHS, to the point that one guy proclaimed that “The NHS is a shining example of what can be achieved under a publicly tax-funded service.” Yet, according to The Telegraph, “almost three quarters of hospitals in England have had patients wait for more than 100 days to be discharged — even though they were medically fit to leave.” Over 2,500 people waited over 12 hours to be admitted to a hospital bed in the first place. According to The Independent, Great Britain has a relatively low survival rate for many cancers, as well as stroke and heart attack deaths. Waiting times for surgeries such as knee and hip replacements can be over three months long. They suffer from too little staff, which is not surprising since their staff is underpaid.
If all this is true and the British still adore their system, they obviously believe that their benevolent government system can do no wrong. Everything can be fixed if they just throw a little bit more money at it. And since they culturally believe that their system is so perfect, they cannot fathom why someone would not simply accept the words of The Experts and look outside the system for better healthcare. If the hospital decided that the child must die, then surely they must be right.
Well, at least this is Great Britain. This could never happen in America, where we value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness above all other things.
Or could it? Take a look at America today. Listen to the arguments over our healthcare system, and see how many people are arguing that it is the government’s duty to take care of us. Watch American college students violently riot and demand the government take care of them by prohibiting speech they find offensive. Listen to Bernie Sanders’ fans cheering for the government to force the rich to pay ‘their fair share,’ so that the government can then use that money to take care of everyone else.
If we want to stop our country from going down the same road as Great Britain, we need to take action now. Hopefully it is not too late to reverse the march toward dependence and totalitarianism.
We need to educate people about the roles of government and civil society, and how they differ. Government is there only to safeguard our natural rights. It is society’s role to make sure those who need our help are taken care of. If we can explain to people that their family, friends, neighbors, and community will be there for them if the free market fails them, maybe they will be more willing to take a chance on the free market.
We need to help people understand that, yes, the free market will absolutely fail some people. However, when the free market fails you there is always something you can do, kind-hearted strangers on the internet who will send you money, somewhere to go. Whereas when the government fails you, it will do everything within its considerable powers to ensure that you do not succeed without it.
If we just sit by in smug complacency and do nothing, one day an American judge will dictate to the weeping parents of an American Charlie Gard that they must allow their child to die with dignity. And it will be American citizens who mutter “The child must die. The Experts have proclaimed it to be so, and they know best. The parents must stop fighting and just let him go.”
