<p>There is a court case in Minnesota where a 13 year old boy has said he does not want to have chemo for his cancer. This cancer in his age group has a 95% cure rate.</p>
<p>His parents should be charged with child abuse/neglect, he should be made a ward of the state and forced to take chemo. “I don’t want my medicine” don’t fly. Remember holding your kid’s mouth open and forcing the syrup down his throat? This is all assuming he has health insurance that would cover the cost of chemo.</p>
<p>Reminds me… saw a preview for the film “My Sister’s Keeper”, based on the book, looks like they did a great job making a movie out of this superduper manipulative tearjerker.</p>
<p>I think this family really doesn’t understand science and medicine. From the Sleepy Eye newspaper:</p>
<p>The court petition states that Tony and Colleen are “not denying the chemotherapy and would start a round of it again if the cancer begins to grow more. They do not want to follow through with the whole course of treatment recommended (for Danny) and are, at this time, opposed to the recommendations of the Children’s and Mayo doctors.”</p>
<p>However, earlier in the article:</p>
<p>According to the court petition, doctors at Mayo Clinic and Children’s Hospital told the Hausers that Danny had “a 90 percent chance of being cured with standard chemotherapy and radiation…decreasing significantly to 50 percent or less if the tumor is allowed to re-grow and develop resistance to chemotherapy.”</p>
<p>If they are against any medicine, why have they been to Children’s Hospital, the Mayo Clinic, and now the University of Minnesota?</p>
<p>His side effects from the chemo treatment were more than the nausea:</p>
<p>After the first round, Danny suffered respiratory distress due to a pleural effusion, excess fluid in the lungs. The effusion had to be drained by a chest tube and the mass was noted to have decreased in size.</p>
<p>If this were a Christian family, who believed in healing by prayer, would you guys be saying the same thing? I find it abhorrent that anyone would be FORCED to take Chemo. This isn’t anti-biotics. Some people may in fact prefer a shorter, but higher-quality life over a longer, low-quality life. The 95% cure rate puts a different spin on it, but I still find the idea of forcing someone to take chemo crazy. </p>
<p>I have to disagree with the characterization of chemo/radiation on this forum. As someone who has watched several family members die from a combination of chemo/radiation, it is FAR worse than the cancer itself. It is NOT medicine. Whoever calls it a “medicine” has obviously never seen it in action. The whole point is that it is a poison- it’s a race, who can last longer, the cancer or the patient? Nevertheless, when the person goes off chemo/radiation, they rarely become “healthy”. In most cases, chemo/radiation is used as a last resort. The doctors know it most likely won’t work, but it makes money for hospitals.</p>
<p>reminds me of missouri v cruzan, only this person is conciously deciding, however they are underage, state will probably win and force treatment</p>
<p>Those parents deserve criminal charges. It’s their belief in alternative medicine that’s brainwashed this kid into thinking he’s going to live if he just keeps taking their herbs and weeds. </p>
<p>Who on earth would refuse their CHILD WITH CANCER a treatment with a 95% cure rate in his age group? No matter what faith you’ve got in your alternative methods, how can you argue with a number like that with your child’s life on the line?</p>
<p>My mom had this same thing happen to her. It was extremely frightening - she couldn’t breath. She was hospitalized due to it. It is not a minor side-effect, it is life-threatening!</p>
<p>That said, a 13 year old with a disease with a 95% cure rate stands a very good chance of getting 50+ more years of life if he goes thru with the chemo. There doesn’t seem to be any trade-off of “quality vs quantity” to me, when you’re talking about that many years! Unless he’d be living those years blind and deaf, or as a paraplegic or something, I think the obvious choice is to take the chemo. Perhaps the doctors need to lower his dose, though.</p>
<p>To answer the question: No, I don’t think a 13 year old can refuse chemo - at least not for a disease with a 95% cure rate. Maybe if his odds were very low, 10% or something, he could opt to accept his fate. But that’s not the case here.</p>
<p>Yes, he should be forced to take the chemo.</p>
<p>The only thing that gives me pause, DD’s friend’s father died from the chemo. He had successful rounds, tumor gone, and was at home. He collapsed and they determined it was not the cancer but the chemo that did it.</p>
<p>There are no guarantees, even with the chemo. The medical judgements are based on statistics, and neither the patient nor the medical folks can tell him for sure in which group he’ll fall.
So a judge could order the 13 year old to be dragged kicking and screaming and subject him to a treatment, against his wishes, that is painful and dangerous, with no guarantee that it will work? Only their best statistical guess?
I understand why people believe he should have the treatment. But how can you really enforce such a judgment, if it came out that way? Would the police just come in and take him? Would they arrest the parents? It all seems so extreme and bizarre. In practical terms, it seems undo able. Also, at 13, I think the patient should have a vote in this.</p>
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<p>So, without chemo, his chances could be 50-50.<br>
The problem with all of these stastistics is that they are just numbers. No one can say how any individual’s cancer will react. That is a fact.</p>
When a murderer fires a gun at someone, there’s a chance it’ll jam. If it is an old unreliable gun, perhaps a 5% chance. This doesn’t really matter - if he doesn’t get the treatment, he will probably die. </p>
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However child custody cases are usually enforced. Maybe the court order will change his mind and it won’t come to this (allow him to think “they made me do it”). It’s worth a shot.</p>
<p>Yet the Mayo clinic doctors said that he could have a 50% chance without chemo. </p>
<p>I agree that the kid should get the chemo. I just don’t think the state should force him if neither he nor his parents want it. He could live without it. The statistics say so.</p>
<p>I interpreted it as if the tumor is allowed to increase in size, it will be much harder to kill because of developing resistance due to the one round of chemo he has already had. There would then be only a 50% chance that the later chemo would be effective. In the article the mom said that if the tumor grew larger, she would consider going back. However, his chance of full recovery will have dropped from 95% to 50%. I’m not sure the mother understands this.</p>
<p>The tumor had shrunk after the first round of chemo.</p>
<p>I really don’t know what to think about this. I would hate for someone to tell me how to take care of my kid, yet statistically the outcome for the boy would be so much better if he were to go through the chemo.</p>
<p>Society tells parents all the time how to take care of their kids- mandatory schooling (at home or elsewhere) to begin with. Ignorant/stupid parents- they apparently were willing to go along with a start in treatment but are unwilling to face treatable complications. Reminds of when I was a resident and one set of parents postponed cancer treatment for their 3 year old for fears of sterility- xxx, jr. ended up dying instead. Unfortunately you can’t save people from themselves- being of a certain religion is no excuse- all those so called Christians who refuse treatments are ignoring Christ’s separation of physical and spiritual (Caesar’s coin story). Parents do not own their children, children deserve the best our society has to offer, including overriding parents’ poor judgement.</p>
<p>I agree that he should get the chemo, but I don’t think it’s such an easy decision. He’s 13, old enough to have opinions about his life and the way he wants to live it. I think that’s being dismissed out of hand pretty unfairly. His opinion about his life is equally as valid as the state’s, his parents’, or the doctors’.</p>
<p>I think there’s a lot of grey area in this case that’s getting overlooked.</p>
<p>We typically let parents raise their kids the way they want, unless they are endangering them or neglecting them. In this case, the parents are endangering their child’s life by withholding essential medical treatment. To me, this is an easy case. And:</p>
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<p>Much of this is simply wrong. For certain cancers (including some childhood cancers) chemo/radiation provides a cure. It’s also the first-line treatment for many cancers. It is certainly not worse than the cancer, unless you think that living is worse than dying. It’s true that chemo/radiation can be very tough, and it can be reasonable for a person to refuse it if the chance of a cure or significant remission is remote. But this is apparently a childhood cancer with a 95% cure rate.</p>