Money, health and law

As anybody else I have suffered watching Charlie Gard's hospital pictures.
 Who can say what kind of world there is behind those closed eyes?
And why does he tight so strongly his little hands?
Nevertheless I wondered, as a man and as a lawyer, why his life was going to be stopped against his parent's will.
The High Court's sentence has given me the right answer.

 The GOSH (Great Ormond Street Hospital) made an application  to the High Court in order to know if it were lawful for the hospital to withdraw the expensive  artificial machines which keep Charlie alive. 

The doctors  say in their application that any  decision would be taken, as in the past,  in the best interest of the little boy. 

But still the same question rose on my head: why against the Charlie's parents? 

Why don't they have a say in their boy's life? 

Well, though the good Mr Justice Francis has tried to overlook the issue, I must say that the real origin of the whole affair is the money. 

As a matter of fact if Mr Gard and his wife Connie had had the money to pay the Charlie's expensive treatments, then the hospital would have never applied the High Court. 

They can now mix the cards otherwise but since the beginning it was a matter of money.

And when Charlie's parents rose a fund to transfer their son in USA it was too late:  the voice of law had already spoken.

Nobody would have allowed to make such an application to High Court if little Charlie was not kept alive with the National Health Security's money!

And the bitter truth can't be hidden anymore: You can live only if you the money for! If you can't afford it, you may surely die! In the name of justice!

I'm not saying the High Court's sentence was unfair or, in some way, wrong. That's not the point! It has even appointed a Guardian in the interest of Charlie,  though it was clearly  against the parent's will! And the reasons of the sentence were well balanced; and even drenched of human compassion.

We may talk a long while about euthanasy or about the fair ethic of keeping a live attached to an artificial machine's treatment, but I underlined once again that this is not the focus in Charlie's affair. 

The justice has been promoted in the name of the public interest: with that money we can save more other lives, likely to be saved more than little poor Charlie's.

But how many kind of lives do exist? Are we making a range in the right of living? And wher do we put the equality principle in this heartbreaking affair?

It's difficult to answer only one of these questions. But we cannot hide the truth behind a finger: the law, in this case, has taken the supremacy against life because the lack of money; the poor has been crushed under the obscure formulas of law.

I hope the law finds the courage to step back. 

If they don't want  God saying the  last word, I hope they leave Charlie's parents decide about their own flesh.

The European Constitution

My dear Friend, after the cruel facts of Paris, who saw the death of seventeen people, I would like to offer you my following reflections. Primarily an embrace and condolences to  the entire French nation. Someone one day said " I'm don't agree with you, but I would fight to  death  for your right to say it"

 
You see, my friend, I don't agree on what   Charlie Hebdo publish about religious items, even in my youthness I used to like  religious and  political satire, but what Islamic fanatics have done  in Paris last week, at the redactionne of that satirical juornal, reminds me of the great masters of thought of the Enlightenment.

  In Paris the assassins have fired on our history, our culture, our time. I'm Practicing Catholic, but I also believe that's a great value to be able to choose between to believe and not to believe. 

Islamic terrorists killed the Charlie's vignettistes but  they did not kill the achievements of our civilization and our freedom.  

There is a gap between our culture and  those of the other continents of the world, those of other civilizations of the earth; but if we make a correct comparison we must speak of Christian culture from one hand and Islamic culture on the other.  

And now the question is: who is going to  fill the gap that separates our civilizations?  

I believe that would be a mistake to think that Islamic need to live their own age of Enlightment or, even worse,  than we should give up our achievements of liberty.

  And so? I think we Europeans we must report to the Islamists as Christians: both are civilizations and we must compare, trying to understand each other. I lived in Italy the epic of terrorists; there was, at that time, someone who said that the terrorists were mistaking  companions;  I don't know  if also Islamic terrorists are brothers who are wrong (that's a problem to be solved inside the Islamic culture); but I think that we, Europeans, all together, we need to be united to better relate to other cultures.  

Let's adavance with the  European Union, then, my friend. Let's drop the differences e mistrust between us and let's walk all together, not against, but forword to other cultures, affirming and confirming our cultural acquisitions. I embrace you and sent my best wishes for a 2015 full of happiness.