Charlie Gard, he's on life support, in a London hospital. He has a rare genetic disorder. There are only 16 people in the world who have had this. It prevents his cells from producing enough energy to sustain his organs. At this moment, he can't move or breathe on his own.
The parents have raised $1.6 or 7 million to move Charlie to an American hospital. Why would you move him to an American hospital? Well, because socialized medicine is not as good as the medicine here in the United States.
There is a doctor here at Columbia that has dealt with this very genetic disorder before. And there is a child that is living with this now, five years after treatment and is doing better, off the ventilator, beginning to move his hands and his feet. And the parents say he's a happy child. But does he have a life worth living? What kind of life is that?
The hospital took the parents to court. They said they need to let the baby die. They won a series of court rulings. The final one, last week, in their Supreme Court. It was an EU decision. It allowed them to turn off the ventilator and the feeding machines that are keeping Charlie alive.
His parents asked for just a few more days. They say there's this experimental therapy in the United States. They have the money. The pope has offered help. Donald Trump has offered help. And yet, Theresa May is saying the child has to die.
We're going to tell you this story today because this is not about an isolated child. Slate Magazine already, immediately put out a story: The right is going to make this into a horror story for socialized medicine and death panels.
Yes, we're not going to "make it into" a story. We're going to tell you the truth. This is what death panels look like. There is a group of people at the hospital that says this child has no livable life of quality, and they don't want the child to live anymore.
Why not give the child back to the parents? Why not let the child go overseas for experimental surgery or experimental treatment? Why not?
Well, it's causing the child so much pain. They're living in pain.
May I ask you a question: Do you know anybody who is dying of cancer? Do you know anybody who has stage four cancer and has been given the death sentence by the doctor? Some of those people say, "Okay. You know what, I just want to live my life. I don't want to go on more chemotherapy. I don't want anything. I'm going to use the last five months, two months, a year of my life, to live it as fully as I can. Other people that I know are in so much pain, they can barely move. And they're begging for experimental surgery. Begging for experimental therapy. Begging for experimental drugs. And their case is the same: It might work. Even if it doesn't, it will further the medical understanding of cancer and perhaps cure people later.
Since when do we accept a death penalty? Now, that's different than somebody who is 100 years old and they've lived a great life and we're doing everything we can and they have no money, just to keep them alive. Nature is calling them home.
But you could make the case, yes, but if there's experimental life-prolonging medicine out there that is the fountain of youth, if that person 99 or 100 years old says, "You know what, I want to live longer and I have the money and I want that experimental treatment," I don't have a problem with it. Do you? Why should I care? It's their choice.
Well, this is a baby. The baby doesn't have a choice. And especially in the world of socialized medicine.
Nobody paid attention to what was happening in the British courts. And the British courts in 2002 is where this started. It was a landmark case. There were two Siamese twins. And the Siamese twins, the weaker of the twin girls was Mary.
Her heart and lungs were not fully developed. And she was robbing the strength of the other one, Jodi. Had they remained conjoined, the judges believed, at the best advice from the doctors, that they would both die. The parents said no. We don't want them split apart. Her lungs, we believe, through faith and through medicine and through time, we believe her lungs will develop and she will be stronger for the surgery later.
The courts said no. Cut them apart. They did.
As a result, Mary died. Jodi lived. Mom doesn't know best. Father doesn't know best.
England insists that the state knows best. They know what's best for other people's children, and they have the power to act on it, even against the parents' wishes. So why is this happening?
Well, this happens over in socialized medicine countries quite a bit. It doesn't happen so much here because WE have the power. We still think we have the power. That power is slipping through our fingers right now.
The accounts of two-thirds of the National Health Services, their socialized medicine, two-thirds of the providers are in the red in 2015. With the combined deficit of 2.5 billion euros last year alone.
The prime minister is saying, we're going to give you an extra 10 billion for the NHS by 2020. So they're into rationing.
When you're into rationing --- we taught all of this when I was at Fox at the chalkboard. When you ration, you need death panels to decide who is going to get the medicine, who is not. It's not some evil dressed-in-black-like-the-Gestapo death panel. It's a group of people that care about people, and they have to weigh the good of the many against the good of the one.
Well, that's not how I view my child. But once socialism runs out of other people's money, then trouble starts.
Because the NHS is paying for Charlie's --- he doesn't have insurance. He has government insurance. And because they are paying for the around-the-clock care, the medical staff believes that his condition is worsening, the NHS is the bank, the hospital, the parent and the court of God.
So governments believe --- America didn't, but we are headed down this road --- that the government manages health, wealth, education and everything inside of our home. That they are the arbiter. They know best.
There was a court case here in the United States. Supreme Court. Prince versus Massachusetts. 1944. The Supreme Court held that the government has, "broad authority to regulate the actions and the treatment of children and that parental authority is not absolute and can be restricted if doing so is in the interest of a child's welfare."
This will come here. You and I have spent a long time worrying about our country. And I have told you that we first had to restore honor, which meant restore the truth. Know what you believed. And then be a person of honor and integrity.
Then we restored courage, because there was going to come a time when you were going to need to stand to defend that truth, and it would be really unpopular. And that we were headed towards a world where the most vulnerable --- be it children, the Jew, or people without any kind of political clout or power --- were going to come under attack. And we needed to stand, even when it wasn't in our own best interest. Even when it hurt. Even when it was people we didn't want to defend --- we had to stand for their constitutional rights.
And the last one was restore love. Make sure that your heart doesn't soften.
And to do that, we all went to Birmingham and we started to fight for the most vulnerable, the Christians, and their children who were enslaved by ISIS.
This audience has saved 20,000 people. We have moved 7,000 people we have moved out of the Middle East. When the rest of the world said they can't figure it out, we did. They can't figure out who the good guys and the bad guys are. We have!
We can't get involved. We did.
We can't save those children from their prison rape rooms where the mothers are being forced to watch their daughters being raped five and six times a day and the daughters are forced to watch their daughters being raped, the world sat on their hands and did nothing. Well, that's too complex. It's too difficult. It's too dangerous. This audience knew every single life is worth saving.
You don't know Charlie. You don't know his parents. But the more that I read this story and the more I hear about their plight and his plight, we are all the parents of Charlie Gard.
