LONDON, July 18 (Xinhua) -- The parents of Charlie Gard, an 11-month-old baby in southwest London who is in terminal stage of a rare DNA disease, remained optimistic after a U.S. neurosurgery professor arrived here and gave the kid a brain scan.
Dr. Michio Hirano, professor of neurosurgery from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, gave the terminally ill Charlie a brain scan on Monday to determine whether it's worthwhile to give the baby an experimental therapy in the United States.
Just one month after his birth on Aug. 4, 2016, Charlie was diagnosed with a rare disease known as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, which can cause progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.
British newspaper the Telegraph quoted a source close to Charlie's parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, as saying they remained optimistic after the scan.
The parents insisted that their child be sent to the United States for an experimental "nucleoside therapy" while the medical team at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), the London-based hospital where Charlie has been treated, said that his brain damage was irreversible and that life support should be switched off to let him "die with dignity."
The hospital said that withdrawal of ventilation and palliative care were all the hospital could offer to Charlie, who it said "had no quality of life and no real prospect of any quality of life," according to a BBC report on Monday.
However, Hirano, who was given an honorary contract by GOSH under which he can access Charlie's full medical records, said after the Monday scan that there was no evidence that the brain damage was beyond treatment.
The disputes over whether to continue Charlie's medical treatment have been at the center of a court fight since March, which has seen a High Court judge and three Court of Appeals judges all favor ending the life-support treatment.
The European Court of Human Rights started to analyze the case in late June after receiving a written application submitted by Charlie's parents. It later decided not to intervene as the majority of its seven judges "endorsed in substance the approach" taken by the British courts and declared "the decision is final," the Guardian newspaper reported on June 27.
