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Cassie was not able to convince the Court that she was capable of making life and death decisions for herself.
Would you not try to keep her from putting a gun to her head and killing herself? Should she have the "right" to do that?
Really? A gun to her head in comparison to a therapy that in and of itself kills? Chemo has been shown to put cancer in remission while taxing the body so that in 5 years the cancer is back in full force. Declining that treatment is not the same as pulling a trigger at your temple.
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Originally Posted by markg91359
Conspiracy claptrap.
Only a person who has extremely little knowledge of the way our legal system works would make such a comment.
Minor children, under our system, are treated as persons "without capacity" or "under disability". Medical decisions are ordinarily in the hands of their parents or guardians. The right to parent children is a right protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. In order to deprive parents of this right, a judicial proceeding has to take place and if parents cannot afford legal counsel than counsel has to be appointed for them.
The right is not an absolute right though. Parents don't have a right to neglect or abuse their children.
In a case like this, there has to be an assertion of medical neglect. The assertion would be that the parents failed to obtain proper medical treatment for a child after having been informed that such treatment was necessary. The matter has to be heard before a judge. The judge would have to be make series of findings. I haven't read the opinion in the case, but I can pretty much guarantee you that the findings would have to look something like this:
1. That a minor suffers from such and such disease or medical condition.
2. That such medical condition will not get better on its own.
3. That the medical condition poses a grave and imminent risk to the life of the child.
4. The effective treatment exists under our medical system for that condition.
5. That the effectiveness of the treatment is well known and can be shown through medical studies and articles that appear in reputable medical journals.
6. That the child's parent or guardian has been informed of the condition and the treatment and has rejected it.
7. That the parent or guardian has been given an opportunity to explain why they have not availed themselves of this treatment.
8. That the parent has failed to show that there is alternative treatment which would be just as effective and can be proven in the same scientific manner.
Think about what you said above
"Your child is a ward of the state". Not unless you neglect them and a court determines so in a hearing.
"You lose all right to medical decisions". I think if a guardian could come back to court later and show that better treatment was available and that could be scientifically proven, the court would have to modify its order. Plus, once a minor is cured, the power to make medical decisions would ordinarily revert back to the parent or guardian.
"They can put them into clinic trials for new drugs or experimental drugs". BS. This can't happen because the fact that the drug is experimental or in clinical trials means its not approved as treatment and that inadequate scientific data exists to require someone to submit to that drug. This is just nonsensical scare tactic.
"They can put them in a foster home". Any parent who neglects or abuses their child can have this happen to their child and rightfully so.
"They can put them up for adoption". Termination of parental rights in our society is rare and difficult. Courts are far more willing to allow children to be placed temporarily in foster care. Termination of parental rights ordinarily requires a showing of long term abuse or neglect in which the parents had opportunities to change their behavior and refused to do so. In reality, many children languish in foster homes all over this country because of the difficulty and reluctance of our system to terminate parental rights even in cases of blatant abuse and neglect.
My advice to you is to go read about the foster care crisis. You'll see plenty about states that cannot terminate parental rights because of the high level of proof required and limited resources to do so.
There are thousands or stories of medical kidnap... see here: Medical Kidnap
Have too many children, home-school, live off the grid, refuse medical treatment, ask for a second opinion... the list goes on.
DSHS/CPS gets more dollars the more they take kids away from parents. The fact is that this girl discussed her condition with her parents and they all did the research. Just because some doctors ego was hurt and some judge thought the alternative treatment they wanted to do wasn't good enough is not grounds to force medication. Especially medication that has known horrible side effects! I shudder to think that it will take you having it forced on you to realize that your right to decide, with informed consent, what treatment you will undergo is of utmost importance in our human rights.
Don't be so naive as to think it won't happen to you or your family when we set a precedent that the gov't controls our bodies.
So what YOU are essentially saying is a 16 year old MINOR CHILD should have the right to refuse life saving treatment because they are afraid of POSSIBLE side effects??????
That lack of mature reasoning was evidence enough that this CHILD was not capable of making an adult, informed, rational decision about her own health...
So 90% chance of death but NO side effects vs 85% chance of cure and POSSIBLE side effects....while an adult can certainly make that foolish choice a CHILD cannot.
The only point of contention in this original argument centers around age of maturity....
A 16 year old can't legally buy cigarettes, alcohol, vote, get a license (state dependent on age), join the military, work or drive after certain hours, go to an R movie alone etc etc etc...
But according to you, that same 16 year old that our society has clearly stated is not ready for most "adult" activities/rights/privileges etc should be able to refuse life saving treatment??
Nope...sorry
As for your ridiculous rant about "medical kidnapping" pure nonsense not even worthy of retort...
My 16 year old drives, has a job (at a movie theater where she watches R rated movies), attends school, helps around the house, makes meals.... Obviously you don't have kids or at least haven't had teens yet...
As I said before, Chemo kills good and bad cells. It leave the body susceptible to all sorts of complications. There is no guarantee that chemo (with or without radiation therapy) will even work long term.
Alternative treatment is what they sought and why shouldn't they be able to do that? It is no more or less guaranteed to work.
I chose not to do any treatments for my ovarian cancer. People flipped their poop when i said it but its MY choice and at the end of the day, I have to be at peace with any choice i make. No one else.
Really? A gun to her head in comparison to a therapy that in and of itself kills? Chemo has been shown to put cancer in remission while taxing the body so that in 5 years the cancer is back in full force. Declining that treatment is not the same as pulling a trigger at your temple.
This statement is false:
"Chemo has been shown to put cancer in remission while taxing the body so that in 5 years the cancer is back in full force."
My son had chemo 27 years ago. He is still alive and well. His story is typical for childhood leukemia.
Refusing treatment for a potentially curable malignancy is indeed the equivalent of putting a gun to your head.
Can there be fatal complications from cancer treatment? Yes, but you vastly overestimate the frequency with which it happens.
Quote:
DSHS/CPS gets more dollars the more they take kids away from parents. The fact is that this girl discussed her condition with her parents and they all did the research. Just because some doctors ego was hurt and some judge thought the alternative treatment they wanted to do wasn't good enough is not grounds to force medication. Especially medication that has known horrible side effects! I shudder to think that it will take you having it forced on you to realize that your right to decide, with informed consent, what treatment you will undergo is of utmost importance in our human rights.
Don't be so naive as to think it won't happen to you or your family when we set a precedent that the gov't controls our bodies.
There has been no mention of any input from the girl's father. The mother is ignorant and an ineffectual parent. The girl failed to prove her case (running away from home really shows maturity ) that she should be able to decline treatment for herself.
There is no "alternative" treatment for Hodgkin disease.
Adults get to choose concerning medical treatment. Kids do not, and their parents are not allowed to make decisions for them that can cost their lives when effective medical treatment exists.
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Originally Posted by katjonjj
My 16 year old drives, has a job (at a movie theater where she watches R rated movies), attends school, helps around the house, makes meals.... Obviously you don't have kids or at least haven't had teens yet...
Good for her. If she had to show a judge that she was mature enough to make her own medical decisions perhaps she would be able to do so. The girl in the OP could not do it.
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As I said before, Chemo kills good and bad cells. It leave the body susceptible to all sorts of complications. There is no guarantee that chemo (with or without radiation therapy) will even work long term.
Alternative treatment is what they sought and why shouldn't they be able to do that? It is no more or less guaranteed to work.
Certainly there may be side effects from treatment. Most are treatable and leave no lasting effects. While there may be no guarantee, current treatment for Hodgkin stands a high probability of curing the disease.
The statement that "alternative" treatment is "no more or less guaranteed to work" is not true. That is a false equivalency. There is no "alternative" treatment for Hodgkin.
I chose not to do any treatments for my ovarian cancer. People flipped their poop when i said it but its MY choice and at the end of the day, I have to be at peace with any choice i make. No one else.
I presume if you know you have ovarian cancer that you had surgery for it. Depending on the type and stage, surgery alone is sometimes curative. Additional treatment can reduce the risk of recurrence, however.
As an adult you are free to choose not to take that treatment.
My son had chemo 27 years ago. He is still alive and well. His story is typical for childhood leukemia.
Refusing treatment for a potentially curable malignancy is indeed the equivalent of putting a gun to your head.
Can there be fatal complications from cancer treatment? Yes, but you vastly overestimate the frequency with which it happens.
There has been no mention of any input from the girl's father. The mother is ignorant and an ineffectual parent. The girl failed to prove her case (running away from home really shows maturity ) that she should be able to decline treatment for herself.
There is no "alternative" treatment for Hodgkin disease.
Adults get to choose concerning medical treatment. Kids do not, and their parents are not allowed to make decisions for them that can cost their lives when effective medical treatment exists.
Good for her. If she had to show a judge that she was mature enough to make her own medical decisions perhaps she would be able to do so. The girl in the OP could not do it.
Certainly there may be side effects from treatment. Most are treatable and leave no lasting effects. While there may be no guarantee, current treatment for Hodgkin stands a high probability of curing the disease.
The statement that "alternative" treatment is "no more or less guaranteed to work" is not true. That is a false equivalency. There is no "alternative" treatment for Hodgkin.
The judge would feel differently in a few months when she turns 18, right (the article states she is 17)? But guess what? Since the state officially has "custody" of Cassandra, they can keep that custody until she is 21... sounds fair doesn't it?
"In other words, to my knowledge, never in the history of medicine has a drug company proven that their drug extends the life of a patient relative to the avoidance of all chemotherapy drugs! “Survival time” is only measured by comparing one or more chemotherapy drugs to one or more other combinations of chemotherapy drugs."
The judge would feel differently in a few months when she turns 18, right (the article states she is 17)? But guess what? Since the state officially has "custody" of Cassandra, they can keep that custody until she is 21... sounds fair doesn't it?
As far as I can tell she is on her own when she is 18.
"In other words, to my knowledge, never in the history of medicine has a drug company proven that their drug extends the life of a patient relative to the avoidance of all chemotherapy drugs! “Survival time” is only measured by comparing one or more chemotherapy drugs to one or more other combinations of chemotherapy drugs."
The 85% survival rate is a meaningless number.
More hogwash. We know what survival rates were like before the discovery of effective treatment. Prior to the advent of modern therapy - first radiation only, then chemo - Hodgkin disease was 100% fatal. In the 1960s, with only radiation as treatment the survival rate was about 10%.
Now, a new drug has to prove it is as good or better than existing treatment because it would be unethical to deprive anyone of a treatment known to be effective.
This interview was with Cassandra last April who had turned 18 by then, and today is almost 19. It seems that forced chemo, and trauma by the CPS and doctors, was for naught. As an adult, she can now choose whatever method of treatment SHE decides, and apparently she has decided to go for Alternative Treatment.
Did it really make that much of difference in how she felt as a child of 17 and adult of 18?
My 16 year old drives, has a job (at a movie theater where she watches R rated movies), attends school, helps around the house, makes meals.... Obviously you don't have kids or at least haven't had teens yet...
As I said before, Chemo kills good and bad cells. It leave the body susceptible to all sorts of complications. There is no guarantee that chemo (with or without radiation therapy) will even work long term.
Alternative treatment is what they sought and why shouldn't they be able to do that? It is no more or less guaranteed to work.
Do your kids buy alcohol at 16? Are they voting in the upcoming elections? Can they join the military RIGHT NOW???
THOSE were the questions you conveniently ignore....
There IS an age of majority in this country and it is 18...not 17...not 16
(Oh and I have "kids" a lot older than yours)
As for what "you said about chemo"....meaningless because you clearly don't understand it...
Actually, conventional treatment IS much more likely to work than alternative (AKA quackery) treatment...
That's not an OPINION thats FACT and it can be PROVEN
Unlike any of the nonsense you have posted in this thread
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) that she should be able to decline treatment for herself. 
