July 22, 2006
I don't like it, but I think the judge is right
A judge in Virginia has awarded partial custody of a teenager to the relevant county and its social services department.
The reason? The child's parents were found neglectful in treating their son's Hodgkin's Disease. The disease, if treated, is curable about 85% of the time.
But Abraham Cherrix was unhappy with the side effects of treatment - nausea, weakness, your run-of-the-mill chemotherapy and radiation therapy complaints - so when his disease became active again, he refused to return to his oncologist and decided to go to an alternative medicine clinic in Mexico. They recommended a sugar-free, organic diet with herbal supplements.
Yeah, that's gonna do it. This is cancer we're talking about, buddy boy. Eating right doesn't count. So we have parents whose child has a largely curable disease choosing not to seek treatment. It'd be one thing if they were trying to get treated and couldn't afford it. No negligence there. But in declining to seek the proven treatment of a curable disease, they did, in fact, exhibit negligence.
Though I'm uncomfortable with the courts intervening in parents' decisions about their children's health care, I have to admit that in this case the judge and Social Service department have a point.
