VA v. Cancer Patient's Parents

[Gesslar]

Topic: Alternative Therapies

Should parents be able to choose whatever cancer treatment they feel is best for their child, even if it's not proven to work? The answer is no according to federal and state laws that say parents must choose a treatment that's proven, or be charged with neglect.

Sometimes this doesn't seem right. Especially when you hear the story of Michael and Raphaele Horwin, who acquiesced to demands that they treat their 2-year-old son Alexander with chemotherapy for brain cancer. Only after Alexander died did they find out that a clinical trial testing that very same treatment in children was halted because it accelerated the spread of brain tumors.

But another case described by Art Caplan, head of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, in his latest MSNBC column is altogether different. A 16-year-old boy named Abraham suffering from Hodgkin's disease went through chemotherapy once, but the cancer came back. He refused to go through the treatment again and instead began an alternative treatment: Abraham's dad brews herbs including licorice and red clover, and he and his wife offer spiritual prayers while their son drinks the concoction four times a day. Now the state of Virginia is taking his parents to court to force conventional treatment on him. Why is it the state's business what cancer treatment a boy and his parents choose?

According to Caplan:

There are two simple reasons. Standard medical treatment for the kind of cancer he has works. And Abraham, for all his apparent sophistication and thoughtfulness, is still a kid.

Cancer doctors at my medical school, the University of Pennsylvania, tell me that, supplemented with radiation, the cure rate for Abraham's cancer is between 85 and 90 percent after three rounds of chemo. This is one of the most curable of cancers - not one to try to fix with licorice root.

True, the young man has been through the treatment and hated it. But he and his parents have talked themselves into believing that a screwball regimen from a Tijuana clinic is just as likely to save his life. It isn't.

Do Abraham or his parents get the last word versus the state? Not when his life hangs in the balance.

Even if the court orders Abraham to undergo chemotherapy, Caplan doubts the boy will be handcuffed and escorted to the hospital. Still, he thinks the state should win the case to hopefully talk sense into the parents.

(lifted from http://blog.wired.com/biotech/#1540443)

[Gesslar]

My first instinct is to ask, who's going to pay for it?

In a system where the people pay for their own medical treatments, I don't think it is fair for the government to impose specific, mandatory treatments when they're not the ones footing the bill.

[Savaric]

I have to side with medical science on this (big surprise there). That herbal stuff is fine for colds and the shits, but cancer? Please. I won't dismiss herbal remedies, I think they have some merit, but there's been very little study put into them. It says they're giving him spiritual prayers as part of the treatment for his cancer. That tells me they aren't playing with a full deck of cards.

But then again, if someone wants to throw their life away then why not let them? It's their body, their life. Oh, he's under 18. Then I guess the government should intervene because everyone under 18 is a rock. He could also be brainwashed by his parents that in fact really want his life insurance.

Correction: I can't see an insurance company paying out benefits for refusing medical treatment.

[xaxer]

Originally posted by karahd
Topic: Alternative Therapies

A 16-year-old boy named Abraham suffering from Hodgkin's disease went through chemotherapy once, but the cancer came back.
He refused to go through the treatment again and instead began an alternative treatment: Abraham's dad brews herbs including licorice and red clover,
and he and his wife offer spiritual prayers while their son drinks the concoction four times a day.
Now the state of Virginia is taking his parents to court to force conventional treatment on him. Why is it the state's business what cancer treatment a boy and his parents choose?


(lifted from http://blog.wired.com/biotech/#1540443)

This could turn into religious rights VS state neglect laws
a 16 year old can be emancipated and make his own decisions
and then parents can not be held responsible I would think.
but younger it might be a bigger issue.
there are some religious fanatics that think shaking
a rattlesnake over their bed will do the trick I bet
I would say talk to the boy .. he tried chemo it made him
sick and didnt work.
he may just be tired of fighting and if thats the case I dont think any treatment will work.
The biggest thing is the will to beat it
I would suggest doing both treatments myself

[Blog]

This is a no brainer, the doctor should make the final call, this case isn't even borderline, I can see if the parents wanted treatment A instead of treatment B and there was some real discussion going on in the medical community about which was better, but that is not the case here (like the first point made by the blog). The parents should also be forced to pay for the procedure, if they are unwilling to, the kid should be taken away from them, at which point medicaid will pay for the procedure and he will get a foster home if things work out.

If its a religious thing, then I'm pretty sure this debate has played out before with that one religion that refuses vaccines and blood transfusions.

[Halyanne]

At least the government isn't touting a "Healthy diet" as an AIDS/HIV remedy....

'Manto should resign'
18/08/2006 20:28 - (SA)

Cape Town - Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang should resign if she took delivery of a one million rand (about $143,000) car, says the Independent Democrats (ID) leader Patricia de Lille.

In a statement on Friday, De Lille said if the Beeld report was true then "she (the health minister) must resign in disgrace and save South Africa any further international embarrassment. Enough is enough."

The Afrikaans Johannesburg daily reported on Friday that the health department's ministerial affairs deputy director, Victor Khanyile, apparently ordered the car - a demonstration model - for the minister earlier this week.

It was apparently a Mercedes Benz S500.

The ID leader said the new car was "further evidence that too many of our leaders have forgotten the terrible levels of poverty amongst those that voted them into power".

De Lille said years ago she had told parliament that the government's unwillingness to provide South Africans with antiretrovirals (ARVs) "reeked of hypocrisy, because many of the MPs were themselves taking the drugs for free on their medical aid".

The ID leader said: "This comes at a time when millions of South Africans are dying of Aids-related diseases, often because the department of health does not have the money - or does not know how to spend it - to provide enough ARVs."

De Lille noted that at the International Aids Conference in Toronto this week, Tshabalala-Msimang stunned the world with "her unorthodox views that patients should be given a choice between using medicines or nutrition to hold the virus at bay".

De Lille noted that the health minister had been dubbed "Dr Beetroot" - one the suggested vegetables to fight HIV. The minister had not taken offence to the title, De Lille noted.