New Ulm, MN – A judge has decided that a family cannot refuse chemotherapy for their 13-year-old son, who has a very treatable form of cancer.
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Daniel Hauser and his family, who belong to the religious group Nemenhah Band, want to treat the 13-year-old’s cancer with “natural medicine”, despite testimony from doctors that say it would essentially be a death sentence.
Hauser, who has a very treatable form of cancer, will have a 90 percent chance of survival if he receives chemotherapy for his Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Without the therapy, however, the boy will not live. Pediatric oncologist Dr. Bruce Bostrom at Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota says that without treatment, Daniel will die: “It is almost certain that he will die.”
District Judge John Rodenberg ruled today that Daniel will seek treatment for his cancer – and gave the family a small window of time to get Daniel a new chest x-ray and to choose an oncologist.
We should take to this Judge all the believers in natural healing
i believe in alternative medicine,and know people that got cured.its the parents decision,don’t you think they want the best for their child
All these people who market or sell natural so called medicine for cancer patients are total rotschim. Acorrding to this judge they should recieve the death penalty.
nebach. nebach.
refuah sheleima l’khol cholei yisroel. may we never have to make these decisions.
this is the most ridiculous thing i’ve heard in a long time!! there are many ways to cure cancer other than invasive chemo. why should someone who wants to use a different method be forced to use chemo?
A judge should have the authority to order the best treatment for the child without regard to religious objections…yiddeshe or otherwise.
“this is the most ridiculous thing i’ve heard in a long time!! there are many ways to cure cancer other than invasive chemo. why should someone who wants to use a different method be forced to use chemo?”
Sorry but you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Chemo is not the only Cancer cure. There is an other cure which is completely natural and WORKS. It is called Death.
After have the cure called “Death” the person no longers suffers from any form of Cancer.
I heard the parents want to give him gocheat juice.
if there would b other ways to cure cancer wouldn’t it b used mainsteam.?
i know s/o who had cancer and for 3 or 4 years this women ate grass , lettuce greens … you get my point,,, green veggir
and she is still alive
I had Hodgkin’s when I was sixteen and while it’s curable, it’s hell. As far as I know, chemo is the only way, but with Hodgkin’s the entire treatment could be over in less than a year. With herbal remedies who knows if the kid will make it to the end of the year?
There was this kid in my hospital who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s too and even though he was explicitly warned not to mix any other treatments with his chemo, his grandmother INSISTED on homeopathic remedies. They ended up interfering with his treatment and the boy died- he didn’t have to – he had the same cure rate as me- over 90%. In effect his grandmother did him in.
I think that Judge was right. I would never want someone dictating my course of treatment, but then again, I’d run to take the treatment to begin with and not rely on remedies that can’t assure the same success as chemo.
The basic issue is: Who “owns” children? Do parents have a proprietary rights vis a vis their children or are children realy small citizens and wards of the State who are simply left with their birth parents for rearing because it’s cheaper and easier than having the Govenment do it. If the former, than the parents have the right to raise the children as they see fit, as orthodox Jews for instance, and to choose (or not choose) specific medical treatment as long as there is no negligence or criminal intent involved.
This seems quite simple in terms of halacha. We have an established 90% CURE rate with chemotherapy, in a minor, and there is NO scientific evidence of any curative effect of any of the ‘segula’ type remedies. If these were frum parents, there would be no way halachically that they could refuse treatment.
The only theoretical issue would be whether the patient himself would be allowed to refuse this medication given that it might cause him pain and suffering, but since he clearly stands to gain “chayay sha’ah,” life for more than one year, I cannot imagine any posek letting a frum child under similar circumstances not receive this potentially life-saving treatment.
It’s a shame that so many people who post are so ignorant of modern medicine and post nonsensical comments, in a matter of life and death such as this one.
So if a judge orders someone to undergo chemo and he/she dies r”l, is the judge a rotzeah? If I don’t want to take anti-biotics for a strept throat or another infection should a judge be able to force me to? I personally have only taken anti-biotics once in the past ten plus years (and it didn’t help that time)even though it was prescribed a number of times. I used natural medicines such as garlic, maxi-biotic etc., and I’m still alive and kicking. Just because allopathic medicine has become the establishment doesn’t mean that only they have the legal or divine right to heal. Obviously cancer is serious illness and people shouldn’t self medicate, they should consult the appropriate expert in the mode of medicine they prefer.
Last I checked, none of these cures chemo, homeopathic, or otherwise, work. Why? Because only HKBH causes refuah. You can kid yourself with the hishtadlus of medicine all you want, but at the end of the day, that’s all it is… HISHTADLUS.
The more we often we nominalize the ribono shel olam by claiming we can change things b’derech hateva, the more we start to believe it. If you really want to know how to “cure cancer,” start by looking in the sifrei kadosh of our ba’alei mussar. They point out that every makeh is ONLY the result of cheit. How do you remove the makeh? Identify the cheit and teshuvah/tikun for the cheit.
In a case where the likelihood of a cure is very good with chemo then alternative medication is not really the best way to go – however, when doctors have said, sorry we can’t do anything else, then obviously one turns anywhere, sometimes it helps but most of the time it doesn’t, what it does is give one hope but not much more.
Childrens cancers, no matter the prognosis is too fast growing for any of these alternative medicines. They take alot of time “if” they will work. And one never knows what the tumor needs to grow, sometimes these alternative stuff is the best food for it. So before any of you speak bad about chemo, just look at the results. How many people you know who took chemo and survived and how many took alternative and survived. You do the math!!