Boy taken away from his family for refusing chemo

This certainly is a complex issue. One of the problems I have is that children are often influenced by wanting to please their parents. Did the parents seek out alternative therapies and express a predisposition to go that route?

I can fully appreciate the child's reaction to chemo therapy. He's experienced it and it was wretched. But is he fully aware of what buying a few months versus a few years of life really means?

This case is somewhat reminiscent of that Alberta boy who had a bone sarcoma on his leg and didn't want the traditional surgical approach of amputation. His parents were all for some alternative therapy that didn't require such a life altering treatment.

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Originally posted by angrymonkey:
[b]I'm starting to think that all this bashing of science in the science forum is not totally unlike all the ignorant men that used to post in the feminism forum. [/b]

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Oh yes, science has been so oppressed, beaten down and downtrodden! How about you take a hike with that line of false positioning and minimizing?! [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]

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Originally posted by jas:
[b]Invasive and horrendous chemical treatment with dubious life-saving results, YES.[/b]

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Invasive? Yes. Horrendous? I don't know. My father was recently cured of cancer because of chemo - he didn't enjoy the chemo much, but he sure likes being alive. So, I'll have to disagree with you on the "dubious lifesaving results" part.

Good lord, a triple post from me. I'm sorry, folks. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]

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Originally posted by angrymonkey:
[b]I'm starting to think that all this bashing of science in the science forum is not totally unlike all the ignorant men that used to post in the feminism forum. Sorry to go off topic but the derision and suspision of science and medical practitioners I come across here now and again doesn't seem very logical to me.[/b]

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This is the HUMANITIES and science forum, not just the science forum. Humanities include philosophy, ethics, etc. This subject is well within bounds of debate here.

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Originally posted by laine lowe:
[b]This certainly is a complex issue. One of the problems I have is that children are often influenced by wanting to please their parents. Did the parents seek out alternative therapies and express a predisposition to go that route?

I can fully appreciate the child's reaction to chemo therapy. He's experienced it and it was wretched. But is he fully aware of what buying a few months versus a few years of life really means?

This case is somewhat reminiscent of that Alberta boy who had a bone sarcoma on his leg and didn't want the traditional surgical approach of amputation. His parents were all for some alternative therapy that didn't require such a life altering treatment.[/b]

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There was a case like this in Saskatchewan. The boy didn't have the amputation, and died. At about the same time, a relative of mine had the same kind of cancer and had her leg amputated. Years later, she is cancer-free and happy to be alive.

I don't find this issue complex at all.

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Originally posted by RosaL:
[b]

There was a case like this in Saskatchewan. The boy didn't have the amputation, and died. At about the same time, a relative of mine had the same kind of cancer and had her leg amputated. Years later, she is cancer-free and happy to be alive.

I don't find this issue complex at all.[/b]

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That's super, RosaL. I'm sure it's also the same for folks who stopped or decided against medical intervention for cancer, and also survived, happily. Those success stories are on both sides of the issue.

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Originally posted by jas:
[b]By the way, I do admit to using the term [i]anti-choice[/i] in an overly and deliberately provocative way, and I can see that it's hard to use that term generically, given its history.[/b]

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Thanks for telling us you felt free to exploit our human rights that we women fought for!

And in the meantime the authorities take him away from his parents? So he can do the chemo that he doesn't want without the support of his parents - then what? Does he heal in foster care, or in an institution, then get returned to the parents or are they now considered unfit? Is this a case for permanent foster care? What if he doesn't get better, (the odds are only 50% remember)does he ever go home? Or does he now have to die in a hospital or foster care having whatever treatment is deemed necessary. If he lives another two years, or four, or seven, at what point is he allowed to make decisions regarding his own life and health?

I don't think it is that simple.

I know Michelle. What I was asking is what would happen if the parents had not complied. Doug had suggested that the solution was simple and I was questioning how that could be so.

Edited cuz I hit the post button too soon.

[ 14 May 2008: Message edited by: Polly Brandybuck ]

I don't think I could allow my 12 year old to turn down treatment if I honestly believed that it may save her life. But of course I can't say as I have never been in that situation. I do know that once kids are taken from their parents "for cause", and are in the system, it's really hard to restore the family.

But I have sat by and watched someone very close to me suffer through the side effects of chemotherapy and it was truly terrible. The fatigue, depression, pain, nausea, hair loss, numbness...she used to joke that battling cancer was a cakewalk compared to battling chemo.

It didn't cure her either.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I don't agree with taking kids away from their parents during traumatic times like this, but if it was the only way to get the parents to bring him for treatment, then I think the one or two days in CAS custody was probably worth it.

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Great. We'll remember this for the next case: Traumatize the child and family into submission to established medical authority.

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Originally posted by jas:
[b]

That's super, RosaL. I'm sure it's also the same for folks who stopped or decided against medical intervention for cancer, and also survived, happily. Those success stories are on both sides of the issue.[/b]

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Unfortunately, I don't think there are nearly as many on one side as on the other.

I was irked by the rank stupidity in the Saskatchewan case and the needless loss of life (especially since my mother was dying of cancer at the time - cancer that was beyond treatment).

I think this case is more complicated than the "Saskatchewan amputation case". It seems to me that when the probabilities of survival get sufficiently low, then matters do become complicated. But when the probability of survival (with chemo) is 50% and the child is young, then I think society has an obligation to support the real possibility of life for that child and that obligation takes precedence over both childish judgment and "parental rights".

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Guess what?

Children are not the private property of their parents, to do with as they wish without consequences.

We have something called child welfare laws.

If parents persist in making bad decisions about the welfare of a child, the latter may be declared a child in need of protection, and the state steps in, usually in the form of its delegated Children's Aid Society, and subject to the direction of the courts.

You have a problem with that?

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The Daily Show on April 29th on the topic of the failure of abstinence only education.

Jon Stewart “But I am still not convinced. Give me one solid reason why we should not switch over to a more scientific approach?”

Clip of Rep John Duncan ( R ) Tennessee – “It seems um rather elitist to me for ah people who have degrees in this field to feel that they – because they have studied it – know better than the parents.”

Jon Steward “And I’m tired of these elitist airline pilots with their locked doors and ability to fly planes….. I think I know how to fly my own children through the air.”

Clip of Sen. Sam Brownback ( R ) Kansas – “The current culture teaches against what we try to teach in the Brownback family.”

Jon Stewart – “Yes in the Brownback family we teach that boys have a “God stick” and girls have a “shame cave” and then we never speak of it again.”

[ 14 May 2008: Message edited by: Trevormkidd ]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
[b]...the courts have always been able to step in and overrule the parents in the best interests of the child.[/b]

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[url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080516.CUSTODY16//TPS... in point.[/url]

Court to delve into a minor's right to refuse treatment
by Kirk Makin
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

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By the age of 14, a Winnipeg girl known as A.C. felt that she had the right to prevent doctors from running roughshod over her religious beliefs and forcing a blood transfusion on her.

“I will not violate Jehovah God's command to abstain from blood,” she said at the time. “I have dedicated my life to Him. Turning my back on God, who made my life possible, is not a compromise I am willing to make.”

Her plea fell on deaf ears. A.C. was forcibly given a transfusion to replace blood she had lost through Crohn's disease – on Easter Sunday of 2006, no less.

The medical contretemps reaches the Supreme Court of Canada on Tuesday obliging the court to delve into the [b]issue of when a mature minor can refuse medical treatment based on religious views.[/b]

The case of A.C. v. Director of Child and Family Services focuses specifically on older minors who are forced to accept treatment, even though they have the mental capacity to make treatment decisions.

On the day the drama began, A.C. had admitted herself to a Winnipeg hospital to receive treatment for Crohn's, a chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract that can cause bleeding from the bowel. Doctors quickly obtained a treatment order from a judge.

In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court, her lawyers – Allan Ludkiewicz and David C. Day – quote the child describing the experience as “painful spiritually, mentally, emotionally and even physically. Having someone else's blood pumped through my veins, stressing my body, caused me to reflect on how my rights over my body could be taken away by a judge who did not care enough to talk with me. … That day, my tears flowed non-stop.”

The legal brief argues that a provision in the Manitoba Child and Family Services Act that authorizes this sort of involuntary medical intervention is out of step with generations of judge-made law and with Charter of Rights guarantees to equality, freedom of religion and life, liberty and security of the person.

In an opposing brief, Manitoba Crown counsel Deborah Carlson and Nathaniel Carnegie maintain that any Charter violation that might exist would be more than justified by the importance of protecting children.

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Well, in that case, the boy was brainwashed by his father to hate his mother, and was unwilling to get treatment. The judge, however, ruled that the boy would be forced to get treatment so they could reverse the effects of the parental alienation his father had inflicted on him. So, this was a case of a boy's objections to treatment being overruled by adults.