Every so often there is a case in which parents refuse to submit their child to medical treatment, citing religious beliefs. The most recent example is the saga of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old Minnesota boy stricken with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After undergoing a round of chemotherapy that, understandably, made the boy quite sick, the family ceased the treatments, saying they would pursue alternative therapy in accordance with an American Indian religion known as “Nemenhah.”

A court order was then issued mandating that Daniel undergo the treatments, prompting him and his mother, Colleen Hauser, to flee the state on May 18. Their intention was to seek their alternative medicine in Mexico. But now mother and son are back in Minnesota, having surrendered to authorities voluntarily after a week on the run. They also have agreed to undergo the medical treatments prescribed by their doctors, despite vowing previously to resist them at all costs.

This about-face isn’t surprising, of course. There is the fact that it isn’t easy fighting city hall, and submitting to the chemotherapy is a condition for the Hausers to retain custody of Daniel. More significantly, however, it seems as if Colleen Hauser received some bad counsel about Daniel's legal and medical options. Curt Brown in the Star Tribune discusses this, reporting on the testimonial of a wealthy California man who personally flew the mother and son back to Minnesota. He writes:

Alan Pezzuto, a film producer from Corona, Calif., said the Hausers' trip to Southern California quickly went awry last week, and he accused attorney Susan Daya of ditching Colleen Hauser and her son. “She took two people who were naive about the judicial and medical systems and, for self-serving reasons, enticed them to leave Minnesota,” Pezzuto, 56, said in a telephone interview from his home.

He said Daya “abandoned them” within a day of their arrival “when the water got too hot for her.”

This is believable. It’s easy to see how a mother, emotionally distraught over her son’s pain, could be influenced to act rashly. Whatever the case, this story once again raises the question of where parents’ authority should end and the state’s begin. Should the government coerce parents into seeking conventional treatment simply because it deems the parents’ ideas irrational?

Whatever the answer, the state certainly doesn’t act with any consistency. For example, some parents have been allowed to refuse chemotherapy treatments for their children. Elizabeth Cohen writing at CNNHealth.com tells us of one such case:

Like Daniel, Noah Maxin had a blood cancer doctors said would almost surely kill him if he didn't have chemotherapy. Like the Hausers, the Maxins rejected the doctor's recommendations in favor of supplements and other alternative treatments to boost his immune system. Both cases wound up in courtrooms.

But the similarities end there. A Minnesota court ordered Colleen and Anthony Hauser to have their son undergo chemotherapy and possibly radiation. The Maxins, however, won their case, and for a time gave Noah, who was then 7 years old, only alternative treatments.

After a battle with cancer involving use of both chemotherapy and alternative medicine, and which saw two remissions and two recurrences, Noah died in 2007 at the age of 11. But other children similarly treated fare better. Cohen cites one of them, Abraham Cherrix, who in 2005 won the right to refuse chemotherapy. Today, after adhering to a special diet and undergoing radiation treatment, Abraham is a healthy 19-year-old.

The truth is that for all the marvels wrought by modern medicine, it is, in many ways, still quite primitive. Both chemotherapy and radiation treatments are toxic to the body’s cells; it’s just that they’re more toxic to cancer cells. Thus, you might say that defeating cancer via these methods could be called a Pyrrhic victory. It’s also true that doctors’ predictions are often less than prescient, as some patients who were told they would die or be wheelchair-bound have ended up living a long time or walking a long way.

Yet we still have the question of parental rights. Obviously, we don’t afford parents the kind of absolute authority over their children they sometimes enjoyed in ancient times, when a father could kill a child if he dishonored the family. And virtually all would agree that a child shouldn’t be denied immediate lifesaving treatment after a severe acute injury (e.g., internal bleeding and broken bones suffered in a car accident). But above and beyond this, it gets sticky. And we must always err on the side of respecting parental authority.

Lastly, I come back to our civilization’s inconsistency in this matter. Many will scorn parents who would deny medical treatment, calling them irrational and even child abusers. Yet, many of these same critics have no problem with abortion, as if letting man play God is more palatable than letting nature take its course. They have no problem with abortion but insist that we mustn’t place a toddler in a car without a child safety seat and sometimes suggest that parents of overweight children be charged with neglect. I suppose that while a mother has the right to kill her child while he is still in the womb, parents have no right to endanger him in the slightest once out of it. Now, that is what I call irrational.

Photo of Daniel Hauser: AP Images

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Flu-Bird said:

Imperialists court So now a judge can force a person against their will and religous beliefs to under go medical treatment So whats become of parential athority why isa a imperialists judge now making a families decisions for them?

May 29, 2009

jai said:

... One can only imagine the pain and even death to result from a similarly controlled government health care system. Even a cursory, but objective review of the literature reveals that chemotherapy is far from safe. Autopsies reveal that a large number of patients die, not from their cancer, but from their treatment. A survey of oncologist physicians who routinely administer the poison of chemotherapy to their patients reveals that if facing cancer, a majority would not undergo the therapy themselves. Government has made gods of physicians and of themselves.

May 30, 2009

carolloving said:

This is Medical Tyranny! Who in the world can believe that a 13 year old citizen of this nation is being forced by a court of law and an armed guard at his property line to undergo, against his free will, chemotherapy, which may end up killing him? This family has no freedom at all & is in desperate need of a good constitutional attorney to protect their 9th amendment freedom! If a d**n good attorney does not appeal this action by the court, then none of us have a chance of escaping medical tyranny!

May 31, 2009 | url

MMSmith said:

NEMENHAH NOT a Native American religion A few minutes of research would reveal that Nemenhah is a group of non-Natives with tangential ties to one group of the Native American Church, but Nemenhah is NOT Native. One look at their website shows that one pays to belong.

May 31, 2009

Greg said:

What is there to debate? And we must always err on the side of respecting parental authority. Absolutely. I recently wrote about this as well at my blog (this was while they were still on the run). My key points were: 1. The parents want to follow their religious convictions. They have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to do so, unless they are violating someone else's rights in the process. 2. They are not aggressing against against anyone, including their son. 3. The son has expressed that he wants to follow his parent’s wishes. What is there to debate? How can a judge say it is right to act against the wishes and religious convictions of both the parents and the child?

June 04, 2009 | url

Abraham said:

... Just because the poor kid's mom and dad are nuts doesn't mean he should be subject to a parental death sentence. The withholding of medical treatment is Child Abuse and the state has every right to step in and make sure he's properly cared for. All that religious freedom bunk is pure hogwash. The right to religious freedom does to imply the right to murder.

June 06, 2009

Sean S. said:

Anecdotes don't make science... It’s also true that doctors’ predictions are often less than prescient, as some patients who were told they would die or be wheelchair-bound have ended up living a long time or walking a long way. This is nonsense, and this kind of statement continues to encourage the use of anecdotal evidence against cold, hard statistics. Is it possible, if you get Pancreatic cancer, that you will live past the 5 year mark? Yes. But it is incredibly unlikely. They don't base the 5 year 95% fatality rate on rolling the dice; they have the dead bodies to prove it. When a doctor sits you down and tells you that you will more than likely die without treatment, he is giving you the likeliest scenario based on what we've seen result from others. While it is possible you may survive without treatment, it is not probable, just like winning the lottery is possible, but not probable. Just because some people bet against the house and win does not make it a sound, or even ethical, medical decision.

June 14, 2009