The parents of Charlie Gard tearfully gave up their legal battle to keep their terminally ill baby alive on Monday, saying his condition had deteriorated too far for any possible recovery, in a case they said had touched the world.

The parents said their 11-month-old son might have been able to live normally if he had received experimental U.S. treatment earlier but too much time had been “wasted”.

“We have decided to let our son go,” his mother Connie Yates told London’s High Court, where a judge had been due to hear final arguments as to why a hospital should not turn off life support.

“Charlie did have a real chance of getting better. Now we will never know what would have happened if he got treatment.”

Charlie has a rare genetic condition causing progressive muscle weakness and brain damage and his parents had sought to send him to the United States to undergo therapy, in a campaign backed by U.S. President Donald Trump and Pope Francis.

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