(no subject)

Happy birthday, hawkwing_lb!

This is both heartbreaking and really, really infuriating

The Charlie Gard case.

And okay, besides the honking irony monster that is people whose intended policies demonstrate massive disregard for infant life and welfare getting all on to this, I wonder how many of the contributors to their crowd-funding effort and people squawking about the Evil Fascist Institution That Is Great Ormond Street Hospital (there are not enough sighs in the world) are anti-vaxxers?

Because, really, more children still die in the C21st from preventable communicable diseases than rare mitrochrondial disorders.

It's the whole dramatic narrative thing, innit, alas. Clean water, clear air, sunlight, adequate nutrition and routine vaccinations are not a story. (Not any more, anyway: Jenner, John Snow, Semmelweiss may be fairly dramatic narratives, but the outcome becomes the invisible way things are: smallpox, cholera, puerperal fever - what are they?)

I am not persuaded that the compromise suggested in that Guardian leader: 'Charlie’s suffering could be managed if he were sedated beyond pain for a period while the new therapy is tried' is actually workable: I am inclined to think that the amount of analgesia requisite would be perilous in itself for such a small child.

I'm also thinking of other instances where the Miracle That's Being Held Out is Somewhere Else, not in one's backyard: e.g. people going to (I think it was) Mexico to have laetrile treatments for cancer, and Dr Issels' Ringberg clinic. I wonder if some notion about pilgrimages factors in? - which of course, some people do, e.g. Lourdes. Something about striving and effort and going above and beyond: which don't, of course, reliably lead to the reward of the desired outcome.