Previously, before the chemotherapy regimes for Hodgkin's disease were developed, the disease was a uniformly fatal disorder and it remains one today if untreated.
Today, in children, the survival rate for treated Hodgkin's disease is up to 94 percent.
The usefulness of blood-letting or the usefulness of curing Hodgkin's disease by doing nothing more than "strengthening the immune system" in an unspecified manner have never been documented by survival rate data.
Sometimes, a strong immune system is simply not enough. That is why, prior to antibiotics, bacterial infections killed strapping young adults by the millions every year.
The success of chemotherapy in the treatment of Hodgkin's disease by chemotherapy is more that proven by the 94 percent survival rate the are possible today.
Whether or not the therapy should have been forced on the boy is a totally separate issue but, in Hodgkin's disease, chemotherapy has definitely has changed an invariably fatal disease into a disease with a 94% survival rate.
I think that the same thing holds true for those that are diagnosed with ALL leukemia...it was considered fatal...now, due to chemotherapy, I do believe that the cure rate is between 70-90 per cent...not a full cure, but certainly a whole lot better than zero chance of a cure...
Granted, that is a separate issue altogether from forcing families to accept a particular medical treatment...
I had a spouse die for Hodgkin’s after lengthy chemo and radiation, seeing the suffering I have decided that if I ever get cancer it will run its course.
Besides the obvious discomfort to the treatment, we had to wheel chair into the blood letting rooms, parking blocks away to maneuver around the doctors Mercedes parked in their reserved spots next to the door. Cancer treatment is big business!
Sure for cancer like Hopkins remission rate is high, but Statistics show that even those who are "cured" will never live as long as life as expected for a healthily person. I know a nurse who works with breast cancer patients; she claims the woman will only live 15 years longer ave after treatment even when "cured".
If cancer is caught early, the treatment is better, and maybe not as harsh, but putting trust in the government or doctors in advanced cases, and no trust in God to take you home is just a mistake, and a travesty in this case where this young adult has no right over his own body and determination on what is left of his own life, and the parents who have no right to parent, something out of a new age Orwellian novel!