13-year-old Refuses Cancer Treatment
You’ve probably heard in the news by now about 13-year-old Daniel Hauser who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma and has refused conventional cancer treatment. At this writing, he and his mother, Colleen Hauser, are on the run from law enforcement and believed to be heading for Mexico. Diagnosed in January, Daniel received one chemo treatment and subsequently decided to opt for an alternative treatment of herbs and vitamins. A federal judge ordered that the teen continue to receive the chemo. Defying that order, Colleen fled with her son from their Minnesota home and was last seen in California. She had stated that injecting poison into Daniel’s body was against her religious beliefs. The father claims no knowledge of their whereabouts. The judge has now ordered the boy placed in foster care when found and has issued a warrant for his mother’s arrest.
What a tragic dilemma. The rights of both Daniel and his parents are at stake. However, the government’s case is bolstered by the fact that this type of cancer is highly curable with conventional therapy and that Minnesota law requires parents to provide their children with medically necessary care. Few, if any, would argue that the government should intervene on behalf of a minor if his parents refused the cure-assured treatment for a snake bite, acute internal bleeding, or a deadly staph infection. But, making a crime of refusing treatment known to be harmful to the body and with a 50-year history of questionable success at least leaves room for debate. What if Daniel had been diagnosed with Stage IV terminal cancer and refused treatment? Would he still have been ordered removed from his family and forced to undergo the treatment? We also wonder whether the oncologist offered the Hausers any options for complementary therapy that would enhance the conventional treatment, make it less debilitating, and shorten its duration. Were they informed of any other treatment centers that specialize in legally approved, but less toxic, treatment methods?
The Hausers are not the first family to be caught in this Catch 22, nor will they be the last. Until our society becomes convinced that we need a new strategy for the war on cancer–a strategy that includes proven options that complement conventional therapy–we will always have to deal with cancer issues that place its victims in untenable, no-win situations. The “either-or” option between exclusively conventional therapy and exclusively natural alternatives continues to relegate us to deciding on the lesser of two evils. A new strategy of integrative oncology is long overdue. I invite your comments.
May 29th, 2009 at 23:17
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