Replies

So you support the course of action taken by the MD and CPS? Tell me what gives you the right to decide between risk of death from lumbar puncture or meningitis in place of the parents? The parents wanted to wait a reasonable time before authorizing more invasive and risky intervention.

Tell that to a Judge and see how far you get.

What are the risks of playing Russian roulette with one live round in a six chambered revolver?

If, in my opinion, I decide that the risks are zero percent instead of 16.6%, would a Judge allow me to play Russian Roulette with my child?

The "risk of death" of untreated meningitis is not a matter of opinion. The "risk of death" from untreated meningitis is a well documented scietinfic fact.

The "risk of death" from untreated meningitis is almost 100% for Haemophilus influenzae meningitis, 100% for pneumococcal meningitis and "only" 75% to 80% for meningococcal meningitis.

In the 1920s, 77 of 78 children at Boston Children's Hospital who had Haemophilus influenzae meningitis died. The prognosis for untreated pneumococcal meningitis was equally bleak: of 300 patients, all died. In the first decade of the 20th century, untreated meningococcal meningitis was associated with a mortality rate of 75 to 80 percent.

By contrast, the scientific literature documents a 0.3% rate of significant complications for lumbar punctures (spinal taps). That turns out to be less than one case in every 300 cases.

In regards to "waiting a reasonable amount of time", in the case of meningitis, that makes as much sense as saying that you are going to "wait a reasonable amount of time" before you take a child out of the striking range of a rattlesnake.

It takes a very short time between the point when bacterial meningitis is treatable and the point when it kills you.

See GovernmentShrinker's Post 46:

"To: Polybius.......... Meningitis can move with frightening speed. A friend of mine had a sister die of meningococcal meningitis. The sister was at college, a couple of hours from home. First she thought she just had a cold, but it got worse so the next day she went to the college clinic. The clinic transferred her to a hospital immediately, thinking she had the flu but concerned that it was a bad case, since she had a high fever. The clinic called the parents right away to notify them that their daughter had been admitted to the hospital with flu symptoms. The parents jumped in their car and took off for the hospital. Their daughter was already dead by the time they got there............... 46 posted on 08/10/2005 1:45:33 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker

The bottom line is that the probability of significant spinal tap complications is documented in the scientific literature as 0.3% (less than one case out of 300) but the mortality rate for untreated bacterial meningitis is documented in the scientific literature at close to 100%.

This child was estimated to have had a 5% to 10% chance of having meningitis and the parents are not challenging that estimate. The parents are only challanging that they should have been the ones to weigh the risks between meningitis and a spinal tap.

Well, sorry Charlie, but the odds for that choice have already been established by cold, hard scientific data.

The fact that the parents were utterly ignorant of those odds does not change them one bit.

Society has long ago decided that it has a right to overrule parents when parents are putting their children at an unacceptable risk of death.

No Judge in America is going to allow a parent, through ignorance, to make a choice that puts their child at a 5% to 10% chance of certain death when the alternative is taking a 0.3% chance of significant injury.