Case Of Baby Charlotte
Essay: Case of baby Charlotte Wyatt
Desperately ill, 11-month-old baby named Charlotte Wyatt will not be resuscitated the next time she stops breathing, a High Court judge ruled on October 7 this year. The battle was won by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust who wanted the power to refuse life-saving treatment to little Charlotte. The judge, Mr Justice Hedley said that he was guided by one overriding principle: the child's best interests and that would be to stop artificially resuscitating baby Charlotte when her condition next deteriorates.
Born three months prematurely, Charlotte was weighing only 1lb and measuring five inches. She was so small that she fitted into the palm of her mother's hand. She's been desperately ill for her whole life and therefore she has never been able to leave the hospital. Baby's parents, Debbie and Darren Wyatt, had to wait three months before they could hold her and five months before they could give her a bath. Because of serious heart and lung problems, Charlotte has already stopped breathing three times, but doctors managed to save her each time by artificial resuscitation on a ventilator. She has never been fed normally because she can't suck from a bottle, so she is fed through a tube. Beside all that, she needs a constant supply of oxygen. Doctors say she would spend her entire short life in the hospital, terribly disabled with different brain, heart, lung and kidney defects.
After the last emergency that damaged her lungs further, doctors decided that her condition was so bad that it wouldn't be in her best interests to be put back on the ventilator and they agreed that baby needs to be allowed to sleep away peacefully. The Wyatt's, both devout Christians, refused that possibility hoping a miracle from God would save their daughter's life. They argued that Charlotte was a fighter who should be given a chance to survive. Unable to find an agreement, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust asked...
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