Interesting comments. I have a little different take. It is tragic that the lawyers were able to paint this mother as a heartless, overwhelmed mom and that this was her reason for her decision. If this child were an adult, capable of making their own decisions, they would understand that chemotherapy has miserable side effects. As a patient, you are encourage to understand the treatment, costs, risks, and benefits. You then make an active CHOICE as to whether you want treatment or not. The reality is, the treatment he DID cause a secondary cancer. The mother WAS told the cancer was in remission but she had to keep giving him more medicine (is the doctor guilty for not making sure the mom understood why she should keep giving the meds? Especially knowing the mother had some mental illness issues of her own? And what about the fact she tried telling the doctor, several times, just how sick the boy was and it fell on deaf ears?). So, she thought he was cured, was fine, yet she was supposed to keep giving him medicine that made him sick. And it DID make him horribly sick and now there was a second cancer that would need treatment. The mother is the only one who could make the decision of whether the treatment was worth it or not. And don't minimize the side effects as nausea and headaches. You know that the skin cells from the mouth to the anus slough off during treatment, right?
Think about what this mother was facing, giving her 9 year old medicine with no help and no support, and knowing it is making him miserably ill. The child was non verbal so there was no way to explain to him or make him understand that mommy is hurting you terribly to make you better, and even though the doctor says your cancer is in remission, mommy still has to keep hurting you.. It would tear most of us apart. I really love their inane argument that she didn't have the 'typical' reaction of a mother losing custody of her child (which happened during the years between identification of the non-treatment and the boy's death). Is there a typical reaction? If you have not had a single moment of time for yourself, not only dealing with a special needs child, but one with cancer, and then lost custody, is it so hard to understand why she took some time for herself and got a haircut?
When a patient is an adult and can communicate with us, even if we don't agree with their decision, no one convicts them for refusing treatment because they can't bear the side effects or even if they choose to not bear the financial costs. We allow people to die with dignity, on their own terms, especially since with cancer, there are no guarantees the treatment will work - even in this case, the argument was the drugs could 'potentially' cure him. With a child, a parent had to make that decision. Calling this attempted murder is horribly wrong.
So do parents no longer have the right to decide what treatment their children do and do not receive? At what point are we told, do what the doctor says, or else? We are mad at insurance companies for refusing high cost treatments if the added life time is 6 months or less, but now we are allowing a doctor, and believe me, each makes different medical JUDGMENT decisions, to convict this woman of murder because she didn't agree with his treatment plan? And if the child died from side effects of the chemo medicine, would the doctor have been charged? How about if the patient dies from an infection because they are weak (happens every day) - who goes to jail?
Every day, in cancer centers around the country, there are patients refusing potentially curative treatments because they do not want to bear the side effects and financial costs. There are also patients who will see no benefit from chemotherapy, and it might even potentially harm them and shorten their lives, but they demand it and the doctors give it to them. Who has the right to make these decisions? As a parent, I sure don't want to be required to follow the doc's instructions, no matter what I decide.
And is it karma that the dad did nothing to help out during this boy's short life, other than fight the mother for custody when she wouldn't give more treatments, and then promptly put him in hospice so he still didn't have to deal with it, and then he was killed a few months later?
