Ohio family fighting forced chemo appeals ruling under Ohio's health care freedom amendment

Fox ^ | 1/8/14

[steve86]

To withhold chemo from a child with Hodgkin's is very much interpretable as murder.

If I had Hodgkin's and declined chemo would that be suicide?

[TigersEye]

You are probably right about the newer drugs. The essential point was about the freedom to choose one’s own medical care. If we aren’t free to make bad decisions we aren’t free at all. I might be able to afford a couple of days at those rates.

[AnAmericanInEngland]

If the parents are too ignorant to provide the life saving chemotherapy, a guardian being appointed to make educated decisions is the right thing. A pro-life standpoint would be to give the life saving treatment to the child.

[exDemMom]

Chemotherapy is hardly "basic" care.

It is for a child who has cancer.

[exDemMom]

I understand the concerns of people who feel that it's just another step to the point at which the government begins to dictate everything that happens to your child, but this really is a very different situation.

That said, it is conceptually very complicated.

Thank you. As a medical researcher, I have to deal with ethics questions. I appreciate the point of view of a caregiver. Medical issues can be quite complicated.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

“If I had Hodgkin's and declined chemo would that be suicide?”

It would be a poor decision, and if you had a family and children to take care of, it would be a selfish decision. Whether or not it was suicide depends. If you knew that the cure rates were greater than 85%, and you refused because you didn't want to live, that would arguably be suicide.

If you were a severe insulin-requiring diabetic, and knew that without taking insulin you would go into an ketoacidotic coma and die, and you decided to quit taking insulin, would that be suicide?

[workerbee]

To what degree do we carry that argument? I'm trying to get to the broader point of parental rights. Does the parent have the right to say when enough is enough? Is natural death ever acceptable? Conversely, what of the parents who don't want to give up but the hospital or "authority" says too bad?

[workerbee]

I understand the concerns of people who feel that it's just another step to the point at which the government begins to dictate everything that happens to your child, but this really is a very different situation. .... As a doc I have to acknowledge that medical opinions are clearly not always right, and I could see a situation arising in which a treatment is ‘mainstream’, but actually harmful (e.g. we killed George Washington by bleeding him)

The child has undergone some chemo and the parents believe it was killing her. Is that possible? Could a child die from the treatment? How long do you give it?

I am NOT advocating for what the parents are doing, because I would not do it myself. However, yes, put me in the camp who worries that this is another incremental precedent towards authoritarianism. We are moving full-throttle into socialized medicine. Where does the line get drawn? When, and by whom?

[USMCPOP]

“I don’t understand your comment.”

The State wants to save this girl? How many abortions have they aided in the meanwhile? Kill them when they are young.

Not jumping on Ohio, as I don’t know their record, just in general.