Texas Officials, Parents Spar Over Girl's Cancer Treatment

channel3000.com ^ | June 9, 2005

[traviskicks]

You're looking at this from a rights viewpoint; I'm looking at it from a survival viewpoint.
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The same logic is used in gun control, socialized medicine, socialized education, drug laws etc... If it is the case that these parents are killing their child by not giving her the proper medical care (which we don't know to be the case, but just for teh sake of argument let's assume so), then they should be FREE to do so. A crime is committed when parents actively damage a child - via child abuse, but this is much different than deciding over medical treatments.

If you attempt to save this one child by forcible intervention, you are opening the doors to a government power grab, which, in the long run, will result in many, many more dead. IMO

Rights are more important than survival and much more difficult to defend.



Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak because a baby can’t chew it.
-Mark Twain

[andyk]

Last week, authorities issued an Amber Alert to gain custody of Katie after receiving an anonymous tip about possible neglect.

A complete bastardization of the intent of the Amber Alert system. Now the Amber Alert system is a tool of CPS? This stinks.

[Niteranger68]

Can the state force them to pay the bill for the radiation treatment that they refuse to allow? If the treatment kills the child, can the parents sue the state for murder? The point is that radiation treatment is one OPTION for treating cancer, but it is not a cure.

[ClancyJ]

Have not had time to really check on this other than the information on the blog below. Might read the comments, it provides a little more insight into the thinking of the parents.

http://prayforkatie.blogspot.com/

I hope that the tests at M.D. Anderson Hospital will be the determining factor rather than her current doctors because they are the highly respected treatment center for cancer and attract desperate people from all over.

To me, it looks like they feel she needs the chemotherapy AND radiation because it appears the cancer is in more than one location - lungs and kidneys. It looks a lot more serious to me than what the mother is claiming.

If it was my child, that child would be hitting that cancer with everything they have. To not treat it as serious means they do not understand cancer. She is a child with cancer - why deny treatment based on she can't even attend her Bible activities because the treatment has so weakened her.

Cancer treatments DO weaken the body - that is how they fight the cancer. And, of course, she will feel better without the treatment - but not for long. Cancer does not quit.

I also noticed that there is a fund already set up for her medical expenses. I don't think this family is playing with a full deck.

But, I wonder about the state moving in and pulling treatment or requiring treatment. We don't want the state determining medical care.

[ClancyJ]

Yeah, rights are more important when talking about someone else's daughter. Rights are not quite that important when it means the life of your own daughter.

[traviskicks]

Rights are not quite that important when it means the life of your own daughter.
---

It is the life of their own daughter.

I read her blog, she seems like a very sweet and intelligent girl.

[AQGeiger]

So, when determining the best course of treatment, the parents know more than the docs?

The part I liked best was the article's description about how the parents filmed their daughter stating that she felt better and didn't want the additional treatment, and how she added that no one was forcing her to make the statement. It was filmed by her parents, so they obviously put her up to making the statement! I'd bet you a semester's worth of financial aid that, if she were questioned away from her parents or her pastor, she would be saying something different.

I doubt that the parents have much of a legal leg on which to stand. Laws preventing parents from denying life-saving treatments for their children are not exactly old, nor are they unique to the state of Texas.

Interestingly, I was once conversing with the chief of surgery at the hospital where I study. The conversation was about this sort of situation. He said that, in all his years of practicing, whenever he came upon this type of situation, he found that if he talked to the patient away from their pastor or their parents/guardians, and showed them what was occurring inside their body, they always wanted whatever treatment would prolong their life.

[TrailofTears]

So you kill your child by not giving him/her medical care and we will come in and force you to do what is right in our sight concerning the child.

So you want to save your child and give her medical care and we will come in and force you to do what is right in our sight concerning the child.

The common denominator here is that the state gets to decide what is right. I have very little belief that the state has suddenly gained a conscience. I see little evidence of it anywhere else. Their cries of "we are only trying to help the child" are not very credible when nothing else seems to cause them to make similar cries.

It all falls into the idea that they should have the last word concerning those in need. The state may have some interest here, but there is a lot of differing medical opinions concerning the effect of the radiation.

[Mfkmmof4]

By the way the sons will be returned to the parents today.

I too would hold out on radiation as long as possible due to the side effects unless of course I was told she would die.

[TrailofTears]

I don't know at what point the government was allowed to act this way. I am sure it was sometime in the sixties or seventies. I do remember outrage in our society that they found out that Nixon was thinking of having people that he considered enemies audited and investigated. However, he was only thinking of doing it.

Somehow in a short 30 years we went to the place where the president (Clinton) did have his "enemies" audited and investigated. Albeit he did it with little or no public outcry. Very few people cared that he did what he did.

The disintegration of our society to this point seemed to happen without a protest and overnight. These officials who misused the "amber alert system" to exercise their power and will should bear federal charges for what they did, or at least local charges.

It just seems that we wake up every day to another level of acceptance of government encroachment and abuse. At what time will it end? Justice Thomas in his "pot" dissent made it clear when he said those very words. He was right when he said that if it didn't end now when we were discussing a few pot plants in someone's yard, then we had little chance of seeing the government encroachment end anywhere.

I don't know about anyone else but i have children i am deeply concerned about. They can either grow up in a free nation or not. At this point we have granted our children slavery to government officialdom. We need to stop the decline of freedom now before freedom just becomes something that the history books have mentioned as a matter of what was, not what is.

There is probably no greater deception than convincing yourself that things have never changed concerning these issues, and yet they have drastically changed. We have got to find a way to stop this slide toward slavery. New Zealand made the same decisions and stopped their nation's generation's long slide into slavery through government bureaucrats. They have found new freedom from government abuse because they did this. It can be done, we have got to make that decision to go forward and do it.

[traviskicks]

This was from some time ago, yet I received many responses I was unable to respond to on this and another thread (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1420624/posts). I’ve since found the time to write a bit about this story and incorporate some of the new developments. Thought some might be interested in this. Apologies for the delayed response.

http://www.neoperspectives.com/katie_wernecke.htm

[HungarianGypsy]

That just makes me sick!!

[tutstar]

Thanks for the update. This is very heartbreaking and absolutely unjust treatment of the parents. I guess the authorities aren't concerned about the emotional trauma they are inflicting upon Katie.