Posted on 07/25/2006 5:33:56 AM PDT by ohhhh
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51219
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER Threat: Cancer teen to be taken by force 16-year-old Virginian: 'I'm not going to receive chemotherapy no matter what'
Posted: July 25, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
The father of a Virginia teen seeking an alternative treatment for his cancer says a social worker has threatened to use force to take the boy away from the family for court-ordered chemotherapy.
Jay Cherrix of Chincoteague, Va., is concerned there could be an Elian Gonzalez-style showdown over his 16-year-old son, Abraham, who has already undergone chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's disease to no avail.
Appearing on Sean Hannity's national radio program yesterday, Jay Cherrix said, "When the social-service worker came and interviewed me, I told him how Abraham felt and about how we had met a person who had been cured by this [alternative treatment] and how we were supporting Abraham's decision. I said, 'What will you do with my little boy? Will you take him somewhere and strap him down and put duct tape on his mouth and pump full of this stuff if he doesn't want it?'
"He said, 'No, I will come to your house with a uniformed officer, and I will take your son by force if he resists. And I will take him to somebody who will do that.'
"And I said, 'I don't think I can let you do that.'"
He added there have also been other threats to take Abraham away from the family.
"They told Abraham that if he did not go and have an X-ray, they would put him in a juvenile detention center with drug dealers. They told him that if he did not do that they would put him in a foster home. ... We never thought that people could actually say that to a young fellow like that. We've been surprised by lots of stuff but we have a strong faith and we believe that we'll prevail. We think there will be a judge that will use common sense and compassion and grant a stay on that [mandated chemotherapy] order."
"I can't believe we're gonna live in a society where the government now, through a court order, is gonna send some bureaucrat into your house, take you out in handcuffs, slap you on a gurney and stick some medicine in you because they deem that you've made the wrong decision in life. I can't believe we're actually on the verge of that happening here," said an outraged Hannity. "It's almost like Elian Gonzalez for crying out loud."
In 2000, 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban child who made it to Florida by sea, was forcibly taken by armed federal agents in a late-night forced entry into a Miami home to return him to his father in Cuba.
"We have to stop this in the United States," Jay Cherrix said. "This is an intrusion. This is the way you destroy families and it's not fair and it's not America."
On Friday, Judge Jesse Demps of Accomack County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court ordered Abraham's parents to bring him to Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters in Norfolk by 1 p.m. today and give consent to whatever treatment the hospital recommends.
Judge Demps also found Abraham's parents neglectful, and required them to share custody of the teen with the Accomack County Department of Social Services.
"I'm not going to receive chemotherapy no matter what," Abraham said on "Hannity & Colmes" last night. "This is my body, the body that God gave to me, and in the Bible it says for me to take care of this body. It's my temple. ... If you are not able to do with your body what you want to, then you have no rights whatsoever."
When asked to describe his previous chemotherapy treatment, the teen said, "It was worse than dying itself. It was more like torture."
Abraham is looking to stick to a diet of all-natural foods and nuts and take the Hoxsey Treatment from Tijuana, Mexico.
"The diet is an anti-cancer diet which further enhances the immune system; so the three factors, the supplement, the diet and the herbs allow your body to kill off its own cancer," Dr. Allen Chips, who researched the treatment told WVEC-TV in Norfolk.
If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.
Another yellow canary falls off its perch!
White and black...
Men in white coats making decisions for people, backed up by men in black robes.
Getting pretty sick here!
Top sends
This is beyond one young man now. This is about whether we are citizens of the USA or the collective property of the courts and the politicians. It's time someone stands up against the would-be tyrants infesting the legal system, the court system, and our government.
His grandparents can always sue the State of Virginia later. Sue the judges. Sue the governor. If that doesn't work, declare a new revolution. Our borders are wide open anyway. 30 million border jumpers are taking over our nation. How many foreign invaders is that? How many military divisions? 100 million more will walk into America in the next ten years. Border jumpers get priority over native born citizens for college. The whole country has gone bonkers. Congress is controlled behind the scenes by bag men carrying cash in suitcases. Elections are controlled by machines that have no paper trail. Garbage in garbage out. The whole election process is a scam. Just like the Roman Circuses. All anybody needs is a pretty face for sex appeal. The Clintons proved that years ago with Lewinsky. Hillary is a senator and nobody wants to look at her legs. Nobody needs proper identification papers to vote, anyway. Nobody is a popular false name today. And everybody knows border jumpers want to vote. They are required to vote by the socialists that sent them here from Mexico. Corruption rules everything. "Flip this house and get rich . . ."
Television commercial planned for 2008: Who do you support for the next president? Jerry Springer or Katy Couric? That is your only choice. Between know nothing nonsense and total air heads getting richer. The parties in power have spoken.
"I dont know, I think the parents are wrong for denying treatment. I have never understood these snake handling types. Id want the best and immediate care for my kids. And this is the state, not the feds.."
snake handlers, holistics, aroma therapy et al..goofy maybe, but each is an exercise in volition, and that process is what government is supposed to protect.
For those who have survived teen cancer and their families and friends, never mind many others, it sounds stupid and careless - like a teen might think up.
I am reminded of some religious sects that do not believe in generally accepted medical treatment: Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses. What should the state do when a minor child has a curable disease but the family is opposed to that treatment on religious or moral grounds. I think it should be a medical decision. A minor has not yet reached to ability to make such decisions.
In this specific case, I don't know if the treatment was necessary or optional to save the child's life. Can anyone answer that question?
This idiot of a Judge is applying the same rules in this case as he would lets say, some freaks decided their dying 2 year old baby needed a faith healer rather than antibiotics... we NEED to protect children from lunatic fanatics.
However, a per case judgment is what this court is not allowing for. This is a 16 year old, seemed relatively intelligent and wants to make a the decision with the help of his family.
I would say just to be on the safe side, psychological evaluation would be in order just as a precaution, but the state needs to back off and let this person make his own decisions if he is mentally sound, and he does seem to be perfectly capable from what I saw on H&C last night.
Just wait, that sampling of subjects, err citizens in Washington state for a "health survey", that's being funded by the CDC. Give it 10 years and it'll be nationwide. Kansas and another state were given funding by the CDC for this project as well. It's only a matter of time before the feds decide they need to track everybody's health.
WHen I first heard about this case, I thought - this had to be from the Onion. What sort of nanny-state do we now live in where we now force people to undergo sickening, difficult, painful, and not-guaranteed treatment against their will?
If this were the will of the parents, and the child being a minor - then yes, I can see a mandate (but that mandate being one of the parents, not of the courts). BUt the parents and the patient all agree that they don't want the treatments.
This is a major miscarraige of justice. This should have never taken up the court's time.
Or a journalist.
The parents are NOT "denying treatment". Should they drag their nearly-grown son to the hospital and strap him down and gag him while they stick needles into him?
Just for fun, let's look at this from the opposite direction. Since the state has threatened to force this young man into a treatment program he opposes, if he subsequently dies as the result of that treatment (or even in spite of it), can the parents hold the state liable and sue?
It would seem to me that the state forcing this situation on the family against their Constitutional rights and freedoms, has established both a custody and liability issue that will likely keep the family in federal court for years to come.
Judge Jesse Demps, meet Internet - Internet, meet Judge Jesse Demps.
I think this judge has just started his fifteen minutes - hope he enjoys the ride!
Similar case came up in Texas.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,174464,00.html
"When Edward and Michele Wernecke rejected standard medical treatment for their cancer-stricken daughter, the state took twelve-year-old Katie out of their custody—and set off a nationwide debate over the meaning of parents’ rights.
***
The case garnered national attention. Parents around the country were surprised to learn that if they dismissed a doctor’s recommendation, their child could be taken from them. But that is indeed the case. In Texas, losing custody of a child in such situations is unusual but not unheard of. While the most-common instances involve religious objections, such as the refusal of blood transfusions by Christian Scientists or Jehovah’s Witnesses—which legally constitutes medical neglect—the state has also intervened when religion has played no part in the failure to comply with the prescribed care for a minor. In a well-publicized case in 1996, for example, Fort Worth ten-year-old Rachel Stout found herself at the center of a custody battle with CPS when her family whisked her off to Canada for alternative treatment to a life-saving colectomy. Ultimately, Rachel was given court-ordered surgery and returned to her parents. University of Texas at Austin law professor Jack Sampson says that this is typical of cases he has seen, though he doesn’t see as many as he used to. Often, he says, “if the parents have talked to a lawyer, they know they’ll lose.”
In the case of the Werneckes, the question of medical neglect was perhaps the murkiest the state had seen. F. Scott McCown, the executive director for Austin’s Center for Public Policy Priorities and a retired state district court judge who has handled more than two thousand child abuse cases, says, “You either say children are the property of the parents, or you say there is a point at which parents don’t get to make decisions. If you go the second route, you have to leave it up to judges to decide the child’s fate. It’s almost impossible from a distance to find out whether the decision is right or not. Even when you have the facts, sometimes it’s difficult to say what’s the right thing to do.”
Yep...scarey!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
C.S. Lewis
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.