Fighting Ridiculous Regulations Last week I told you about a shocking situation in which federal regulations, backed up by the laws of certain states, allow doctors the authority to have children forcibly removed from parents in cases where the parents decide against using chemotherapy on their cancer stricken children. That e-Alert ("Forcing Choices" 11/6/02) detailed the experience of a young couple whose child suffered from a brain cancer called medulloblastoma. When forced to use a "state-of-the-art" chemo (which they later found out had caused severe and even deadly side effects in children) their son quickly developed dozens of additional tumors and died after only three treatments of the chemo. I received a number of comments on that e-alert, but one of them stood out - this one from HSI Panelist, Allan Spreen, M.D.: "I just read the medulloblastoma e-Alert and, though I'm well conditioned after 30 years to such information, it still makes me physically sick to my stomach. The helplessness of knowing our system allows the government to remove children from their homes under the child abuse law is almost beyond tolerating. "I had a kid with bone cancer of the knee whose parents literally left the state in the middle of the night to avoid the authorities forcibly removing the kid to cut his leg off. They snuck to Canada where they had Essiac and something else. They also snuck back into my office 3 years later just to show me their son, who I no longer recognized, walking in normally on both legs." As infuriating as these stories are, it's good to know that they sometimes have happy endings. No thanks, of course, to the misguided and poorly managed mandates of bureaucratic regulations. To Your Good Health, Jenny Thompson
Health Sciences Institute | 
