This case is terrible, I hope many people continue to fight the court on it and contribute to the cause!

Allowing a court to make these decisions for family members, parents in particular, is extremely irresponsible and dangerous. It opens the door to many other rulings such as:

1. Forced abortion for unborn babies with debilitating disease or birth defects.
2. Forced sterilization of people who could pass on congenital anomalies.
3. Restricted or palliative only care for 'end of life' patients.
4. Patients with severe dementia or Alzheimer's diseases could be required to 'die with dignity'.
5. Parental rights could be removed for going against medical advice or standards because of a potential cost to the medical system later on. A specific example would be if someone brought in a child with whooping cough after declining to vaccinate for religious reasons.

Some would argue that these drains on resources and hopeless causes should be regulated and enforced without emotional baggage. From a purely financial standpoint, they have an argument in a socialized medical system. Which is why, in my opinion, we should not have one. Some of these scenarios may sound terrible right now, but they will sound perfectly reasonable when taxes paying for it are above 50% of income and the care for everyone else is drastically inhibited.

I could continue to list reasons why the state should not be involved in healthcare matters, but I think the point has been made.

Under a non-state healthcare system there will always be doctors and researchers willing to spend time without compensation on patients like poor Charlie. There will always be charities, organizations, and individuals willing to donate financial resources to causes like this.

Appointing government bean counters to make the decisions will end badly for everyone involved, and that's why it is so important to fight for cases like Charlie's tooth and nail.