A high profile Trump supporter and health-rights activist has used the death of British baby Charlie Gard to attack Joe Biden and the Democrats’ plans for “socialised medicine”.
In a delivery on the first night of the Republican National Convention, cancer survivor Natalie Harp claimed Britain’s National Health Service decided that “it was too expensive and too cruel to keep him alive”.
The toddler, who suffered from the extremely rare condition mitochondrial depletion syndrome, died in 2017 after authorities at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) said there was no chance of him recovering. They opposed the request of his parents, Connie Yates and Chris Gard, who wanted to take their 11-month-old son to the US for experimental treatment.
A court in the UK, and an appeal court in Europe, agreed with hospital officials that the treatment available in the US stood no prospect of success and that further treatment would “continue to cause Charlie significant harm”.
Ms Harp, a member of the Trump campaign advisory board, praised Mr Trump’s support of treatments that have not been fully tested, something that has become known as the “right to try”.
Fox News said that before the measure passed, Ms Harp had failed two rounds of chemotherapy, was rejected from clinical trials and was quickly running out of options.
After Mr Trump signed the legislation into law, she was allowed to explore experimental treatment opportunities as well as find new doctors and medications.
“Now, with the coronavirus, everyone knows what that feels like to be waiting for a cure — but we’ve only been waiting a few months. Just imagine what 2020 would’ve looked like, fighting for your life, without Donald Trump fighting for it too,” Ms Harp said.
“In Joe Biden’s America, China would control our drug production. We’d be one step closer to government-run healthcare. We wouldn’t just be unable to keep our doctors, we’d be lucky if we could see any doctor.”
She claimed “some of us would be denied care, for in socialised medicine, you don’t beat the odds”.
“You become the odds,” she added. “And I would lose my right to try, just like Charlie Gard, that terminally ill British baby whose government-run health care system decided it was too expensive and too cruel to keep him alive.”
