BRITAIN: The father of desperately-ill baby Charlotte Wyatt made an impassioned plea to a London High Court judge yesterday not to allow doctors to let her die
"When you get to the stage when you grow to love someone, you can't just throw them away like a bad egg and say you will get a different egg," Mr Darren Wyatt told Mr Justice Hedley.
He said 11-month-old Charlotte was "a fighter" and he believed everything should be done for her, even though she would be disabled. "At the end of the day, she is our daughter," said Mr Wyatt.
His wife Debbie was in court to hear him say he believed in miracles. "If the man upstairs says this person should live, then this person should live," he said.
The judge was hearing a plea by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust in Devon, England, for a declaration allowing doctors not to ventilate Charlotte in the event of a critical respiratory episode and to allow her to die in peace.
Charlotte was born three months prematurely in Portsmouth in October last year, weighing just 1 lb.
Mr Wyatt said doctors should perform a tracheostomy - the insertion of a breathing tube through the throat - so long as Charlotte did not suffer.
He told the judge he was willing "to sign a contract" to the effect that he and his wife would let Charlotte go if, at the end of five days following a tracheostomy, there was nothing more that could be done.
Earlier yesterday, a consultant paediatrician, called as an expert witness, advised the parents in favour of non-resuscitation. The consultant said parents in such awful situations often agreed to the withdrawal of life-support after realising that prolonging life was "futile".
Judgment will be delivered next Thursday.