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Mom has home schooled her kid and taught her that chemo is "poison" so I have some concerns about how well informed the kid is....if not brainwashed by mom and thus is not making an informed decision.
I'm sympathetic to the argument up until the point that when interviewing the mom she's like "we;ll find some sort of alternate treatment".
Whoa, she's got NOTHING else lined up? Her kid is 100% going to die without treatment and she's got NOTHING else lined up?
Oh well, let her die, it's her choice to be a dumbass.
I don't understand how she is forced to undergo treatment if both she and her mother refuse it. Shouldn't that be the end of it? How can the courts intervene at all? They were educated RE: the risk vs. benefits, they said no to the treatment, that's it. The mother should make the ultimate decision, or, depending on the state because of her age or legal status, the patient herself.
Did you read the discussion here? A person who hasn't reached their legal majority can't make a decision like this. A parent can make it for them, but if that decision will result in death or serious injury to the child, a guardian can be appointed by the courts to make this decision for the parents.
You may not agree with, but that's way our system works. Frankly, I'm surprised so many people seem to have no clue that they don't have a legal right to take action that will result in the death of their own child.
There's a lot more to it than simply toeing the safe party line of "it's her body and her choice/life."
If I were the parent of course I would want to do anything I could to prolong her life, especially if there is a very good chance it will lead to a successful treatment, and medication exists to help treat symptoms.
I presume you are older than 18? I also presume you know that minors don't enjoy all the rights that adults do under the law. This renders your whole reply "pointless".
That decision and power rests with the parents, not with the government. The parents in this case have discussed it endlessly with their child.
Government has no business forcing medical treatment on us against our wills. Neither do you.
The girl is seventeen which renders her short of her legal majority. Under the law, a minor does not have the right to determine what medical treatment they receive. Seventeen is close, but is not eighteen years of age when she could make this decision on her own.
Minors are not allowed to decide to if they can go to school or not. They are not allowed to vote, to drink, or to smoke. The system operates on the assumption they are incompetent to make the most important decisions on their own and requires these decisions be made in accordance with a legal framework. I submit that this life and death decision is too critical to be left to someone who has not reached their majority.
The article states that she has Hodgkins Lymphoma and that with the treatment she has an 85% chance of survival. Without the treatment, she is virtually certain to die. If the cure rate were not so high, you might persuade me that this decision should not be forced. Eighty-five percent chance of a cure though tells me that this should not be option.
I don't believe in alternative medical treatments. In fact, I even object to the use of the word "treatment" when they are described. Unless a certain course of therapy can be shown to be effective it does not deserve and should not receive the label "treatment". I believe that people should receive those medical treatments which have been scientifically proven to work.
A real tip off for me was the comment about not wanting all that "poison" in her. It sounds she and her mother have been lied to and perhaps brainwashed by practitioners of alternative medicine.
Why do you think someone can't make this decision simply because they are 17? As has been pointed out, the right to decide what to accept for your own body has nothing to do with maturity and really little to do with age either.
If a child, even at 11 years of age let alone 17, were to hang themselves or intentionally overdose on pain pills, or shoot themselves in the head deliberately, no one would object to that being labeled as a suicide. To say it's a suicide, of course, acknowledges a basic understanding of causation of death. By contrast, a 6-month-old infant cannot commit suicide because he/she simply lacks the understanding. By labeling an act as suicide, you admit the person is old enough to understand causation and comprehend their own death - this distinguishes suicide from an accident (which we would label it as if, for example, a 6-month old rolled off the sofa to his/her death - this would never be suicide!).
If you are old enough that you could commit suicide, then you're old enough that you should be allowed to refuse life-saving treatment, in my view. It really makes no sense to say in one case that one is old enough to understand their own death and in another case they aren't. But that is exactly what you're saying, and hence I beg to differ. This patient should be allowed to make the decision.
Frankly, people physically forcing this patient to accept a treatment is assault. She should call the police. Even if they don't do anything, it would be a good way of drawing attention to the insanity of the denial of basic human rights to so-called minors (which is a rather demoralizing term for people below a certain age but whatever).
Did you read the discussion here? A person who hasn't reached their legal majority can't make a decision like this. A parent can make it for them, but if that decision will result in death or serious injury to the child, a guardian can be appointed by the courts to make this decision for the parents.
You may not agree with, but that's way our system works. Frankly, I'm surprised so many people seem to have no clue that they don't have a legal right to take action that will result in the death of their own child.
This isn't even true in all states - some require "assent" to medical treatment for "mature minors".
She can go through emancipation if she wants that right.
I don't agree. That process takes too long and by then they will have forced lots of stuff on this patient. There is simply no time for that bureaucratic nonsense.
I have been to a National Youth Rights Association meeting back in 2010 where one lady gave a testimonial about the process of emancipation. It took her something like 14 months and then she got denied at the last moment with no notice or explanation when her final court meeting was scheduled for the next day.
She ended up getting married in order to get emancipated.
She and her family apparently did a lot of research and she made an informed decision. The state should out of stay it.
As a survivor of this type of cancer, I can say with 100% certainty that she and her family have done absolutely no research on this type of cancer if they are making this decision. It is NOT an informed decision.
That decision and power rests with the parents, not with the government. The parents in this case have discussed it endlessly with their child.
Government has no business forcing medical treatment on us against our wills. Neither do you.
So if a parent decides to starve their child to death, the government doesn't have the right to intervene?
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