The parents of British baby Charlie Gard today abandoned their legal fight to take their son to the United States for experimental treatment in a case that has attracted global attention.
A lawyer representing Gard’s parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard told judge Nicholas Francis at London’s High Court that “time had run out” and they had made their decision after seeing the 11-month-old’s latest brain scans.
Judge Francis had been due to rule on whether there was enough new evidence to allow the parents to take the baby, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder, to the US for a type of treatment that has never been used on a human being.
But the couple broke down in tears as their lawyer Grant Armstrong told the court: “It is no longer in Charlie’s best interest to pursue this course of treatment. Charlie has suffered severe muscular atrophy” and “the damage to his muscles was irreversible,” he added, according to AFP news.
Mr Gard said it meant his “sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy” will not reach his first birthday on August 4.
The couple had fought a long legal fight to allow them to take their child out of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, but lost in both Britain’s Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
