Exercising one’s right to self-determination and a child’s best interest. Charlie gard, isaiah haastrup and alfie evans among doctors, judges and parents

The paper draws upon the painful experiences of three British newborn children stricken with rare, catastrophic diseases that have been deemed incurable and with no prospect for any degree of recovery by British specialists, who resolved to discontinue the life-supporting treatment keeping them alive. The children’s parents were determined to keep seeking out different forms of treatment at other hospitals willing to accept to keep their hopes alive or at least provide end-of-life care in a considerate, dignified fashion, having the diseases been acknowledged as terminal. British courts sided with the doctors throughout the proceedings in every instance. Parents decided to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), yet the European judges ruled their appeals inadmissible in light of there being, in Great Britain, a legislative framework that is fully compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, which regulates access to emergency care, experimental treatment, withdrawal of life-support and upon which the ECHR judgement is based. Such painful occurrences have raised a great deal of controversy and heated debate as to the dignity of human life, the obligations of science, the responsibilities and limitations to be imposed upon medical science, the children’s best interest, the role vested upon doctors and parents. The authors delved into the specifics of each instance and arrive at the conclusion that parents were at the receiving end of “judicial overreach”.