13 year old cancer kid & mother "missing"
 

yes, mom knows best, not those silly doctors who went to medical school.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090519/ap_on_re_us/us_forced_chemo

According to the article, the 13-year-old can't read. Either he's a retard and his death would be no great loss, or there is a pattern of child abuse and neglect that needs to be aggressively prosecuted.

no one should be forced to take treatment; if you (adult) want to die or try an alternative you should have the right. making someone take healthcare treatment from a private business is messed up. parents should have the right to access alternative treatment for their kids. damn, we let moms have abortions, why not decide what is best for their kids? this is all about $$$$$

my brother is retarded, but I can assure you that his death would be a loss to our family. you might feel the same if it was your family member. OTOH, nobody's life is so important that it is irreplaceable

There's another thread on this subject. In it I asked who would be paying for the chemo if it happens. Chemotherapy can be rather expensive.

The judge in this case ruled that the state had enough to override the constitutional rights of the parents and the boy.

Yeah he actually did say constitutional rights there. At this point it's hardly about the life of the boy anymore. Can you imagine five doctors getting together and denying you, say, the right to peacefully assemble?

like I said all about $$$. either a strong argument for nationalized healthcare or patient's rights (maybe both). no one should be ruined finacially be having to take a procedure that may or may not help them...it certainly is not the government's place to decide that.

I agree fully. From what I heard chemo is very nasty. No one should be forced to take it even if it may help them. That should be the individual's decision. Now if the boy wanted chemo and the mother was against it, maybe there'd be a reason for the state to get involved, but that's not the case here from the little that I've read about it.

the kid can't read. seems like he's a puppet of some whacked out parents.

Probably we will. Thankfully she has spared us the expense. It'll be over soon. His corpse will turn up and we won't have to pay for much besides maybe cremating or dumping it into a hole. I'm good either way.

It should be your choice to undergo a procedure that may or may not help you, healthwise. It should also be your duty to cover whatever obligations that come your way from your choice. Say I had the choice of getting a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan. Sure, the fixed rate sucks if the adjustable would have gone lower. OTOH, had the adjustable rate gone up, your fixed rate would look good. Pick one and go with it. Choose wisely and be rewarded. Choose poorly and pay the penalty. Just like this case. It might help you if you are the 90% or it might not help you if you are the 10%. Either way, your choice. You should have to pay for it.

Cancer is even worse. The question is whether you want to take a chance or not. Yes, it should be your choice. In this case, the child is a ward of the parents and it should have been their choice, not the state's choice.

"he's" is a contraction for "he is", right? Yes, he is right now. Odds are that at the rate they are going, it will soon be "he was". :D

It should still be the parent's choice. There's no evidence the parents are abusing him or trying to harm him. Chemo can kill as well as heal and it's a nasty experience. Individuals or their legal guardians should have the right to try alternative treatments.

Well, yes and no. If the alternative treatment fails and now there is a bigger bill to pay to fix it, who pays for that? As they say, "A stitch in time saves 9". So, if you refuse the 1 stitch today and tomorrow 9 are needed, who pays for the 9? If the govt pays, the govt should have some rights. OTOH, if the person does a total AMA then let them do what they want.

hey, he's a minor thus the state has interest. period.

Are the parents not paying for the treatment? I'm sure the govt isn't paying for some alternative treatment. It seems that the govt wants to pay for the boy's chemo. If that's the case, then saving taxpayer money isn't what it's about, is it. I still wonder how they're going to force the boy to have chemo if he's uncooperative. I guess they'll have to knock him out first.

The fact that the kid cannot read, reinforces my view that he is no position to judge whether a chemotherapist or whack-job vitamin doctor is the best alternative. If the state can remove kids from homes for physical abuse, it should be able to remove a kid from a home when parents use capital punishment. If the state can coerce a woman to keep a fetus inside her for the health of a potential citizen, it's no reach to protect the kid from a nutty mother when he's actually a citizen.

you are correct.

however (oddly enough) the anti abortion crowd probably is also the "parents rights" crowd, inconsistently enough.

The question is this. IF they refuse chemo now and try their own "treatment" and the boy gets worse and they now decide to undergo conventional treatment, what if what is available at that time is more expensive than if they had undergone chemo at this time?

Think about it in this sense. If at this time, I refuse to take the simple step of treating a small wound on my leg and later on, I decide to go to the doctor and he says the leg has to be amputate and it costs more to treat it later than now, who pays?

just as an aside, you seem to be really obsessed with the cost of things.

i.e. money.

just an observation.

I live in a world where resources are not free for the picking.

Just wow. Great sentiment. :rolleyes:

My 6.5yoS has Down syndrome, it would be a tremendous loss to us and our town. There are far bigger resource "wasters" in our society.

And none of the resident bleeding hearts came to the kid's defense either.

I think many people share Skippy's attitude towards the mentally handicapped. Add to that the power of the government to inject a child with toxic chemicals against the parents wishes, a future of economic uncertainty and national bankruptcy, and there is cause for concern for those who end up in the "care" of the state.

Wow dude, reign it in. That kind of comment displays a complete lack of intelligence or compassion. How would you feel if you had a child with learning disabilities and someone started spouting such hateful nonsense?

Reaching new lows here on OD.....Now were bashing developmentally disadvantaged children....

Personally, I think that those with no compassion for the mentally handicapped are themselves more defective than the ones they disparage. I would take the attributes of love, joy, compassion, loyalty, etc, that are demonstrated by handicapped people over the analytical dollar and cents views spewed forth from the bigots.

As offensively as Skippy put it, what he said is true. "Developmentally disadvantaged"/"mentally handicapped"/"learning disabilities"/"slow"/"retarded", no matter what you call them, it all means the same thing.

Which is more productive, caring for a "disabled" person that will never be more than a chair/bed warmer from infancy to geriatricy or starting over right away and producing a child healthy from birth?

Guess that depends on what your priorities are. If you are willing to sacrifice your humanity for a 'perfect' child.....

Just remember this, Albert Einstein was thought to be retarded up through age 10.....guess we should have offed him when we had the chance.....

It is not like this is a 50/50 thing. Kids with this disease have a 95% death rate if they don't do the chemo. If they do the chemo they have a 90% survival rate. Not 100%, but it is not 100% that I will make it home tonight and not get in a car accident on the way.

The kid is a minor. The parents are not making good decisions. Seems simple enough to me.

"Humanity" used to be like the rest of nature, survival of the fittest. Medical technology has allowed us to fulfill the instinct to "live" and "protect the family" at all costs, even if the cost hurts themselves and others.

If he had stayed in Germany and the Nazis had their way, no doubt they would have. Einstein had minor problems with speech and reading, he was still brilliant from a very young age.

So I guess humans should run around and act like animals then?

Humans are animals and most act like it.

How foolish of us to actually *gasp* educate him so that he might be capable of getting out of a chair or bed. I guess we shouldn't have set our bar so high. There's way to broad a spectrum of "disabilities" to summarily write them off. Not all disabilities present health issues and there are lots of disabilities and diseases that can emerge years later with a child healthy from birth.

I'd rather my money go towards disabled American citizens than illegal aliens and welfare cheats. There are plenty of non-disabled people who are a complete waste of oxygen.

What an utterly daft comment.

Try all you want, mentally retarded people are physically incapable of learning the same way a normal person does. If they have the mental abilities of a 2 year old, no amount of education will change it.
You can teach a parrot to talk, but you'll never have a conversation with it.
Thats a totally different subject.

Really? Bioligically we can be defined as animals. But there are many things that set humans apart from beasts. Language, court systems, written laws, knowledge of our own existence and death, etc.

So again, we should act like beasts and kill kids that don't fit the mold and can't survive on their own after, say 5 years old? Feel free to drop out of society and go live in a jungle amungst beasts.

When you age a bit more and experience the world and perhaps even start a family...your views will change. Say you have a disabled son. Would you throw him in the woods to live on his own and die? Or would you show some human compassion?

When I lived with Mom & Dad, they paid the rent, utilities and even my food. Unfortunately, they had certain practices that I didn't care for. In my own house, I do whatever I want. Imagine that. Simple solution. Stop asking the state to get involved in every facet of your life.

Compassion, perhaps. How is it lacking in intelligence?

I'd probably be already in agreement with that someone.

Lets not forget Mozart and the other child prodigies. However, for every one of these prodigies, how many others are there? IOW, if we took 100000 of these sort of people, what are the odds of an Einstein?

A lot of the qualities of the perfect human can be found in the animals. Look at all the wars and fights we have. Animals fight for survival of the species and not to hoard things. Can we even come close to that? I doubt it. Before you rise above the animal level, perhaps you best first rise above the human level.

Thats known as culture. We are animals no matter if a few people wish otherwise.

Not at all. Severe problems are usually apparent well before the age of 5, some even before birth.

What a very ignorant thing to say.

Clearly yours will never change no matter what part of reality others try to show you. Your mind is closed to anything you don't want to think about.

I wouldn't have one.

I was clearly speaking against state involvement. However, handicapped children do typically outlive their parents.

Yes, I understand that. But if you involve the state in paying your tab then that should give them the right to dictate certain things. Kinda like the bailout. GM took the money so when Obama felt the GM head wasn't doing what he wanted, Obama had the GM head fired. Mom and Dad didn't want me having sex with my GF under their roof. I had to take it to a motel and later on move out.

As you noticed, some handicapped children DO outlive their parents. When that happens, the child now becomes a ward of the state. As such, the state has an interest.

Sorry Aklim, you're not making a bit of goddamn sense.

What do you find unclear? If the state has to pick up the tab, why don't they have the right to tell you how to live?

As to the OP first of all this child need chemotherapy end of discussion. His parents are cleary insane and if they want to do whatever that is their choice. However they have purposefully kept things from their son and now he might die.

You might, if the religious right has their way......

The "religious right" has no control or influence over my life.

Too bad they don't pick up the tab AFTER the birth.

F.I. other than just not ever having sex how would you make sure your child isn't mentally handicapped?