Police press parent search

Detectives are focusing on Houston as they continue their search for a Sandy couple wanted for violating a court order by refusing to treat their son's cancer with chemotherapy.

Police have few new leads into the whereabouts of Barbara and Daren Jensen, but more details were released Thursday about the kidnapping case, and friends defended the couple's actions.

The Jensens' 12-year-old son, referred to in criminal charges as P.J., was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a potentially fatal form of bone cancer, three months ago at Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Ewing's Sarcoma is rare cancer and generally strikes children and adolescents.

His parents refused chemotherapy because they were concerned it would leave him sterile and could stunt his growth, prosecutors say. The boy was never treated at Primary Children's. His doctor contacted the state Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS), as per state law, to say the boy's parents refused a possibly lifesaving treatment.

The boy later had a tumor removed from the soft tissue under his tongue, said two sources familiar with the family.

Ewing's Sarcoma is a rare cancer that generally strikes children and adolescents.

"The main priority is [P.J.], we are trying to find [P.J.] so he can get the medical treatment he needs," said Sandy police Sgt. Michelle Brunette.

Sandy police believe Barbara Jensen is now headed to Houston to seek out alternative treatments for the disease, Brunette said.

Police say the Jensens and their five children first fled to the home of Barbara Jensen's father, Henry West, in Pocatello, Idaho, in violation of an Aug. 8 court order giving the state custody of the child. West is a chiropractor and practitioner of alternative medicine. Utah authorities filed one count of child kidnapping on Aug. 15 against both Daren and Barbara Jensen. The charge is a first-degree felony, punishable by up to life in prison.

Detectives arrested Daren Jensen on Saturday in Pocatello just feet away from West's home while investigating a car accident in which the Jensens' oldest son, 14-year-old Garrett, rolled the family's 1994 red Chevrolet Suburban as he drove down the street to get the mail around 6:30 p.m.

Witnesses saw the boy climb from the window of the mangled vehicle. He refused their help and supposedly headed to a campground to use a phone, the police report states. Members of the Bannock County Sheriff's Office never saw the child. They received his name from Daren Jensen and West, who were at the scene, said Lt. K.G. Fonnesbeck.

West identified himself as a doctor, and told deputies the child did not need any more medical help, the report states.

Daren Jensen was booked into the county jail, but posted bail Monday before Idaho officials knew the details of the case, Fonnesbeck said. He is due back in court Wednesday.

While in police custody, he told police his wife was already on her way to Houston. Police have not been able to contact West or find Daren Jensen, Burnette said.

A West family member who answered the door at the family's home in Pocatello on Thursday night said the family would have no comment for several days. "We are just not prepared to say anything right now," said the young man, who declined to give his name to a Salt Lake Tribune reporter.

James Hollingsworth, a chiropractor from Boise, Idaho, described Henry West as "an expert in alternative medicine."

"He knows a lot about homeopathy," he said. "And he probably is one of the most brilliant chiropractors in the Western United States."

Sheri Mower of Provo lived in the Jensen's Sandy neighborhood until about a year ago and was a member of the same LDS ward.

"They're wonderful people," she said of the Jensens. "The kids had every kind of music lesson. These are your neighbors. They're my neighbors. They are making these people out like they are raving lunatics."

Mower remembers when the boy was diagnosed with cancer. And while she doesn't know all the facts regarding the Jensens' case, she can sympathize. She currently is undergoing chemotherapy for a recurrence of breast cancer.

"It's nasty stuff," she said. "I had a 12 percent chance that my cancer would ever come back, and it's back."

"That's the right decision for me. But I certainly understand people who would make a different decision." If the boy could gain a few more years by undergoing chemotherapy, "is it right for him to spend a year of it puking in the hospital?" she asked.

An attorney, Mower said she believes in the law, but it scares her to think a parent's right to make decisions regarding their child can so easily be taken away.

"This could be any one of us. These are loving parents. These aren't parents that stick their kids in the basement," she said.

Primary Children's spokeswoman Bonnie Midget said that according to state law, doctors must call DCFS "if there are children at risk of not receiving treatment."

"No one makes these decisions lightly," she said. "We do recognize the stress of the family. These are hard decisions for our staff, too."

Tribune reporters Ashley Broughton and Kristen Moulton contributed to this story.

This one is tough. My 4 year old daughter was diagnosed on January 6th or this year with a form of Ewing's Sarcoma called a Primitive NeuroEctodermal Tumor (PNET). This was just a week after her 4th birthday.

She's responded fantasticly to chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Thanks be to God! The tumor was in a bad place to operate on, so they didn't. Chemotherapy wiped it out anyway. By the time they started radiation, there was no measurable mass left anyway, so the surgeons may not have found anything had they gone in. Being that the tumor was in soft tissue and not the bone was another blessing.

We have 2 more chemotherapy treatments to go then we wait and see. I have complete faith in God that she'll be cured.

What I wanted to say is, that I really think that there are other ways of fighting cancer. The problem with using natural substances or homeopathic procedures is that the drug industry can not patent them. If the drug industry can not patent them, they can't make money off of them. That's where the crime is. That's where I'd like to see some sort of reform.

A good case in point about natural products not being profitable, consider birth control pills. All of these are hormone based. Most contain synthetic hormones. If a drug company can't make money off of a natural hormone, they synthesize it, patent it, and make money off of it. Even if the synthesized hormone doesn't do the job as well as the natural one, it will still be used.

We'll keep this boy in our prayers tonight.

Regards,

Jim

I think the parents are being railroaded by a state that may not know what is best. They have no rights left. None of us do. Because someone somewhere might let a child die without seeking treatment, by gosh, the state has to get right in there and make sure that we do exactly as they say and don't even CONSIDER getting a second opinion.

If they got one jerk of a pediatric oncologist who wouldn't listen, they were right to move on. So the jerk gives the state's leash a yank and puts it on the scent, and the next thing they know, they're fugitives.

We had a horrible pediatric neurologist once who behaved in a threatening manner toward us over our four-year-old. He even hit my son with a stethascope. We were able to yank him away from that man's care and do what WE thought was best. Everything that man said turned out to be wrong. It's something to think about.

Jensen told police in Idaho that his wife and son may be on their way to Houston, where the family planned to enroll the boy in a clinical trial for antineoplaston therapy. Regarding the therapy which the parents are alleged to be seeking:

This seems to be a balanced view:

http://cancer.ucsd.edu/outreach/CAMs/antineoplastons.asp

This is a positive view:

http://members.tripod.com/~AMN92/health.htm

And, this is a very negative view:

http://www.faith.altbush.com/tumor/burznew.pdf

In summation, this therapy is not conventional, very expensive, and apparently has produced several (many?) cures. The cancer establishment is solidly against it, however. This conflict could or might be at the bottom of this legal problem.

Maybe the parents announced that they were going to use the "antineoplaston" therapy. Many, or most, MDs would look at the cancer establishment information. It would naturally follow that such MD would thereafter "believe" that this therapy was a giant fraud. If the parents had already established a "belief system" in which the therapy was a lifesaver, we begin to have a classic conflict between belief systems.

Assuming that this (imaginary) scenario is something like what really happened, we would have a doctor (or team of doctors) who begin with the idea that the parents are being deluded by a fraud or quack; and parents who see the doctors as trying to give their son poison, and trying to keep him from getting "lifesaving" treatment. After some point in this confrontation, neither side is going to be willing to change its convictions, and both sides believe that ONLY they are looking out for the best interests of the child.

If the above is accurate, we have a "difference of opinion," in which one side has the option of making the other side into felons, subject to a possible life sentence. Seen in this light (which may not be the actual case) the right and wrong sides become much less clear. I hope that, when this reaches a courtroom, the Judge is much wiser than most judges we have heard of recently.

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