Court forcing 16 yr old with cancer into chemo

[blueerica]

I'm with EH1812 on this one. It's a big can of worms when there isn't something firm. In my experience, most 16 year-olds can make rational and reasonable decisions regarding their health as much as almost any 32 year-old. 16 year olds and 32 year olds can both be suicidal, stupid, life-loving and intelligent, motivated and unmotivated - I feel as though age hardly plays a role in how much one wants to live, and how much one wishes for a quality of life to their liking.

Unfortunately, I didn't not follow this thread or the news all the way through, so perhaps there's an explained reason that I'm just not going to take the time to research. What I don't understand is, why did the law have to get involved in the first place? With the chemo kid, he'd been through it before and didn't want to go through chemo again. I can't think of a single person who has had an amazingly awesome experience with chemo. If you'd been through it once or twice before, only to end up with cancer again, would you want to give it a third try. It's like getting punched twice, and then going for another hit, just to see if it hurts less.

While I am always in favor of making health care available, I am more-or-less against making it mandatory. In many instances, I'd prefer a final judgment, should something like this ever make it to court, be deferred to the parents or parental guardians with heavy influence from the patient/teenager/kid. What every human wants in terms of their health and their life should be taken into consideration by the law, no matter their age.

[Kevy Baby]

At Disneyland, adulthood starts at 10.

At least if you are buying a ticket.

[Alex]

A bit of a resurrect. But I'm curious on how this story does or doesn't affect anybody's opinion.

What impact does the fact that the boy was 7 play in how you feel about the story as opposed to late teens in our original discussion?

Does it matter that there isn't an ideological reason for abandoning the chemotherapy (as with Christian Scientists and JW's on blood issues) but rather just being taken in by a quack?

Just to state the obvious, obviously there is no way of knowing that he would have lived any longer (or even as long) had the recommended course been followed.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

...but rather just being taken in by a quack?

Do you believe that all holistic treatments are "quack?"

[wendybeth]

I have to admit, I am terribly conflicted on this issue. To me, it's all so ironic because I wanted our MD to perform a very traditional surgery on Tori when it became obvious to nearly all that she wasn't responding to antibiotics. He allowed himself to be pressured by the HMO to not refer her to a surgeon, and by the time I circumvented their asses and got her in the damage was done. Now, we have a case where the parents want to go against traditional medicine, and they get the same fight.

You brought up a good point, Alex- did the non-traditional treatment help or hinder in this child's case, and what was responsible for the brevity/longevity of his life, post-treatment? I suppose only those close to the case know with any certainty.

[Alex]

Insofar as they are unscientific, yes. If they have subjected themselves to proper clinical study and been proven effective, then no.

Telling a set of parents that diet and supplements are the way to keep their child in remission from cancer (a remission caused by the chemo), definitely so.

If you claim to know something works without any objective evidence to support that claim, then even if you should later be proven correct you've been engaging in quackery.

[Morrigoon]

The parents put him back on chemotherapy after the cancer returned four months later.

My guess is the chemo might not have saved him the first go-around. Consider he was on chemo for 3 1/2 months, then pulled off, the cancer came back, they put him back on chemo, and he eventually died. So chemo didn't save him either. I know the question will be "What if he'd stayed on chemo the first time?", but I still this his survival was in question either way.

[Alex]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

My guess is the chemo might not have saved him the first go-around. Consider he was on chemo for 3 1/2 months, then pulled off, the cancer came back, they put him back on chemo, and he eventually died. So chemo didn't save him either. I know the question will be "What if he'd stayed on chemo the first time?", but I still this his survival was in question either way.

Perhaps, and I admitted as much. But the cancer did not recur until taken off of the planned 2 year treatment course.

But regardless of whether he would have died anyway, in the original conversation the fact that the boy was playing a role in making the decision seemed important. So I am curious where we fall when the child obviously is not mature enough to participate in that decision. Is it still entirely the parents' decision? And if so, is there a failure of treatment so egregious to overcome it? For example, what if instead of preferring holistic therapy (whatever that meant in this context) to chemotherapy the parents just said "You know, its kind of like the decision we faced with fluffy last year. $5,000 seemed to much for saving a cat's life and $250,000 is just too much money, as much as we love the boy we may need that money later and we can get a new kid. Want to see a picture of Whiskers?"

As is so often the case, I'm trying to explore whether there is a line, and if so, how fuzzy is it?

[wendybeth]

If anyone has a line drawn, it would be the insurance companies and the bottom line. The decision-making process is often expedited by monetary concerns, although I know of no parents (thank God) that would ever put a monetary value on their child's life. That has always been up to the insurers and providers.

[blueerica]

There's always a fine line between protecting the public and those who may not have a voice for themselves, and meddling in the lives of others, forcing them into decision they don't want to make. While I tend to be against the government making choices for individuals, it gets tricky with the little ones. It's a slippery slope in either direction.

On one hand, if government continues dipping into family decisions, to me it's almost horrific that I may not be in control of mine or my family's medical choices (or otherwise.) By the same token, without government involvement, children are often times in danger for reasons that extend beyond medicine, and into abuse and other horrors that children face regularly.

These sorts of things are difficult when they're placed in a case-by-case situation. After all, precedence influences the next decision, and so on and so forth.

Hmmm..

Its unfortunate the kid died... Not that I knew much about Leukemia, but I just looked up some basic stats from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The article posted doesn't say what kind of cancer the kid had, but survival rates aren't exactly super high, even if the chances are better for kids and science has come a long way in solving such problems.

I guess what I'm thinking is that the kid had a good chance of not making it anyway.