Pharyngula

Posted by: Kobra | May 25, 2009 6:20 PM

This won't change the damage his parents have dealt to his intellectual development, unfortunately.

Posted by: Kel | May 25, 2009 6:24 PM

Hope the treatment works and the nocebo effect doesn't kick in.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | May 25, 2009 6:31 PM

This is all part of God's plan, Atheists. Now you will see the power of the Lord at work as he cures Daniel right under the noses of your Doctorationalists.

Daniel Hauser, I claim your cure in the Holy and Precious Name of Jesus™! May you be cured despite the best efforts of the unbelievers. May your miraculous return to health in this state-of-the-art satanic Medical Facility be a testament to the mysterious and divine power of God, and may the scientific superstitions of the atheist faith be exposed as worldly dross.

Amen

Posted by: Holbach | May 25, 2009 6:36 PM

No god for you Daniel; now you can recover from your parent's wish to impose one on you.

Posted by: MartinM | May 25, 2009 6:38 PM

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment...

Yes...

...and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

...and no. One does not follow from the other. Children are not chattel; parents don't get to do whatever they like with them. If the parents make decisions which are not in the best interests of the child, the state may intervene, if the consequences are serious enough. This is neither complicated nor controversial.

Posted by: James Haight | May 25, 2009 6:40 PM

Believe we have the right to refuse medical treatment?

Of course.

Believe this means we automatically have the right to refuse our children medical treatment?

FUCK no. This is not a natural extension of the right to self-determination. Your children are not you. Extreme example - you can make a good case for a right to suicide, but do you see the extension of that to a right to kill your children as natural?

Posted by: mzh | May 25, 2009 6:43 PM

tmaxPA - The entire medical establishment more or less does believe that rationally competent people have the right to refuse medical treatment. But this isn't one of those cases. Daniel Hauser is not rationally competent to refuse treatment (for a variety of reasons, only one of which is his age).

The "by extension" that you suggest is pretty iffy, though. Children are not considered property of their parents to be disposed of however the parents choose. An adult can legally carve their name into their forearm, or put out cigarettes on their face. But they cannot legally do that to their children. This is because the relationship between children and parents is custodial - the parents have to act in the best interests of their children. Now, in most cases parents are given a large amount of lee-way in how this works since 'best interests' is a vague term and values differ. But in cases where the parents are choosing near certain death for their child over near certain not-death then the state can step in - just as in cases of abuse - and prevent the parents from acting that way.

Posted by: littlejohn | May 25, 2009 6:45 PM

@tmaxPA:

I would have little argument with your position if the patient in this case weren't a mentally incompetent, illiterate 13-year-old. My father died five years ago by refusing treatment for kidney failure. But my dad was 83 and burdened by a wife with Alzheimer's. He placed Mom in a home and went to my sister's home to die, equipped only with a morphine pump. I might have made the same decision.

The mother is demonstrably insane and the boy can't understand his situation.

I presume the boy will be placed in a foster home to protect him from further mischief by his wacko parents.

Posted by: NoFear | May 25, 2009 6:46 PM

tmaxPA:

I support the right of people to self-mutilate, so by extension should I allow them to make the same choice for their kids and let them mutilate their kids? Hmmm? What do you think?

Your argument is ludicrous, as has already been shown by others above. Now, will you concede or will you further embarass yourself by trying to defend your argument?

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 25, 2009 6:48 PM

been, obviously

Posted by: NewEnglandBob | May 25, 2009 6:50 PM

tmaxPA @5:

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1944 ruling in Prince v. Massachusetts got it exactly correct:

"The right to practice religion freely does not include the right to expose the community or the child to communicable disease or the latter to ill-health or death . . . Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children before they have reached the age of full and legal discretion when they can make that choice for themselves."

This is clear and concise and there is no ambiguity about intent. This issue was settled 65 years ago.

Posted by: The Science Pundit | May 25, 2009 6:52 PM

Oops. Didn't mean to repeat smoggy's spelling of tmaxPA's name. It was funny, though. :-)

Posted by: Emmet, OM | May 25, 2009 6:56 PM

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment,

Mentally sound adults, for themselves, yes.

and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

Absolutely not! I see no point in explaining since any explanation I might have offered have been covered by others above.

Posted by: Ichthyic | May 25, 2009 6:58 PM

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment,

yes. up to the point where refusing your personal medical treatment imperils others around you.

... and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

same issues, except that now you really have to show that it's in the best interests of the child, because your legal rights to make decisions for a minor are spelled out differently for each state.

The state also has an interest in protecting the child.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | May 25, 2009 7:01 PM

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment

Yes, you do.

and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

No, you don't.

This is exactly equivalent to my belief that that you have the right to kill yourself but not your children.

As someone who's only reservation to the concept of single-payer health care is that I don't want the government to force medical treatment on me

*sighs* It's called "single-payer" because it's a government program that pays for your health care. It doesn't force you into going to the doctor any more than your current insurer (if any) does.

Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | May 25, 2009 7:02 PM

I wonder what the results would be if IQ tests were administered to Daniel's parents and his 7 siblings.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a majority of double digits in that crowd

Posted by: Markominaxulouphigebidgehalous | May 25, 2009 7:08 PM

Is there any doubt that if this kid makes it through this ordeal he'll refuse to acknowledge that it was due to medicine? And that he'll be a persistent thorn in the side of the dialogue for years to come?

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | May 25, 2009 7:16 PM

Just to rub it in:

Since I got in early on this thread, I'd like to try to open the discussion up to the counter-claim. Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment, and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

That "by extension" part is deeply scary. (Though not completely surprising, coming from a country where parents are allowed to name their children however the fuck they want, no matter if that means 18 years of horror for the children.)

Your children are not your property. To the contrary: When you decided to have children, you entered the obligation of providing for them. When they can't give informed consent, the default assumption has to be that they want to stay alive...

Regarding that "informed" part, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. The Hauser parents want their own facts. That makes them insane and thus incapable of providing for any children.

I also jump on the bandwagon of asking you to inform yourself on universal healthcare. You seem to know precious little about what every single halfway rich country except the USA and South Africa has... note that even South Africa counts as "halfway rich".

Posted by: Evolving Squid | May 25, 2009 7:17 PM

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment, and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

What treatments and adult does or does not accept for themselves is wholly a matter that is private to that person.

However, society, through the state, has a duty to protect children from parental idiocy as best it can. Therefore, no, I do not believe that there is a "by extension" right that allows parents to refuse life-saving treatments for their children except, perhaps, in the most dire of circumstances (the treatment would save the child's life but the child would be a vegetable as a result... that would be a refusable treatment) but those circumstances would be rare and must be demonstrable through evidence.

Posted by: Arnold Facepalmer | May 25, 2009 7:21 PM

It seems to me after reading the linked article that Mrs. Hauser's religion precludes "Western" medical treatment yet not the "alternative" treatments to be found in Mexico. Were the alternatives some type of prayer circle or hand laying or were they some other type of quantum or homeo-woo? I am confused. Perhaps Mrs. Hauser should have gone to Doogie instead.

Posted by: ConstantNeophyte | May 25, 2009 7:25 PM

"strangely enough, accidents appear to be the one thing I'm covered for here with just a "visitor permit"."

Yay for ACC! It may be a bloated money-sink, but it's got your back.

If I got the swine flu though, then I'd be screwed.
:)

I thought the advice was to limit contact upon confirmation of infection?

Posted by: Anonymous | May 25, 2009 7:26 PM

What's really funny is that when he's cured, his parents will no doubt attribute it to all of their prayers, rather than the thousands of doctors, physicists, and chemists who developed the treatment regimen over the last few decades.

Posted by: SC, OM | May 25, 2009 7:27 PM

Ichthyic - I just emailed you (mentioning it in case you're not checking that acct regularly).

Posted by: Jeremy | May 25, 2009 7:32 PM

I think the topic of informed consent has been well covered, so I won't add to that, but I didn't see any mention of Colleen Hauser being assisted in being a fugitive by this quack "attorney" Susan Daya Hamwi anywhere in the updated article:

http://www.startribune.com/local/45427417.html?page=3&c=y

When the first article was up, I looked her up a bit. Here is her self-description from her (now-protected) Twitter feed:

"Mom-Resolutionary/Conscious Attorney-Mediator/Netweaver- Sacred Agreements/Indigenous Natural Healing Rts. Advocate/Yogini"

Her facebook profile and other pages show similar nonsense.

While not filing charges against Colleen Hauser is arguably an understandable political move for the AG, I for one hope that her absconding Attorney-at-Woo is taken to town for helping her run away and attempting to kill her child with nonsense.

Posted by: Benjamin Geiger | May 25, 2009 7:45 PM

nemryn @ #49:

I was under the impression that IQ scales were adjusted so that 100 remains the median.

Posted by: Richard | May 25, 2009 7:52 PM

#5 said...

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment

Yes, I reckon a lot of people here believe that a competent adult may refuse medical treatment for their own body.

and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

No. Children are not property, and the parents don't have the right to murder them at will.

Posted by: nemryn | May 25, 2009 7:56 PM

Benjamin @ 50: Huh. So they are, apparently. Never mind!

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 25, 2009 7:57 PM

So do atheists reject natural remedies on all counts or only if the parents are religious?

Posted by: Skipbidder | May 25, 2009 7:58 PM

@22 New England Bob--

Do you happen to have something a little more recent or a little more germane than Prince v. Mass? This was a child labor case. I was sure that I could find something myself, but my con law book has nothing and my google-fu is weak. All the recent stuff that I can find all comes from state courts rather than SCOTUS.

Posted by: Benjamin Geiger | May 25, 2009 8:00 PM

makarlos @ #53:

We only reject natural remedies when they don't work, and particularly when there's a treatment that has a 95% success rate, compared to the 5% success rate of the 'natural remedy'.

("Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine.")

Religious beliefs don't have anything to do with that. We don't protest the mother's behavior because it's religiously motivated; we protest the behavior because it's *wrong*. (The religious motivation illustrates the problem with religion, which is its own discussion.)

Posted by: Mike K | May 25, 2009 8:04 PM

"Since I got in early on this thread, I'd like to try to open the discussion up to the counter-claim. Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment, and by extension have the right to do so for our children?"

Adults have the right to refuse medical treatment, of course. I don't think anyone here has argued otherwise. But when it comes to making decisions for your child - because parents are indeed responsible for making certain decisions for their children, including medical decisions - you may have the right to refuse treatment if that refusal is reasonable and in the best interest of the child. But when that refusal is clearly unreasonable and not in the best interest of the child, we call that neglect or abuse. It's not just medical decisions; there are many things you can do as a parent that are neglectful or abusive, and many decisions you can make on their behalf that are neglectful or abusive, and the government rightly has the authority to step in and take over.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about that. Religious beliefs do not trump science - period. Deal with it, because the world is otherwise passing you by.

Posted by: Mike K | May 25, 2009 8:06 PM

"Since I got in early on this thread, I'd like to try to open the discussion up to the counter-claim. Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment, and by extension have the right to do so for our children?"

Adults have the right to refuse medical treatment, of course. I don't think anyone here has argued otherwise. But when it comes to making decisions for your child - because parents are indeed responsible for making certain decisions for their children, including medical decisions - you may have the right to refuse treatment if that refusal is reasonable and in the best interest of the child. But when that refusal is clearly unreasonable and not in the best interest of the child, we call that neglect or abuse. It's not just medical decisions; there are many things you can do as a parent that are neglectful or abusive, and many decisions you can make on their behalf that are neglectful or abusive, and the government rightly has the authority to step in and take over.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about that. Religious beliefs do not trump science - period. Deal with it, because the world is otherwise passing you by.

Posted by: ngong | May 25, 2009 8:11 PM

a lot of people might be agreeing with you if a quarter million dollars of chemo would only increase the kid's life expectancy from 6 months to a year. Here it's a case of 95% chance of cure versus almost certain death. So your argument is much harder to swallow.

I'll probably get diced into little cubes for this, but...isn't there an argument to be made that Hauser's death might have made a very strong anti-woo statement, and would have saved more lives in the long run?

As things stand, he may now be chained to a bed at the behest of the evil feds, and his possible death (which you gotta figure at greater than the quoted 5% now) could be very counterproductive.

Posted by: HappyKiwi | May 25, 2009 8:20 PM

FAREWELL SMOGGY

Dear Pharyngulites,

I think you're right. I've quickly tired of Smoggy Batzrubble myself. I thought he might be an antidote to this blog's worst feature—the fact that sometimes it takes itself too seriously and resorts to invective when humour would have done a better job.

I've had Smoggy shanked in the prison shower and sent his sheep to be slaughtered at the freezing works. I'll go back to being plain old HappyKiwi, and if I can bestir myself I'll make a comment from time to time.

But in truth, the air or preciousness with which you Americans surround your armed forces--the most terrifying killing force in the world--reminds me how out-of-step I am with so many of the posters here. You may not believe in God, but as long as you steep your children in this quasi-mystical notion that military service is somehow sanctified, and that service in the armed forces negates all criticism, war will always be an early resort, corrupted politicians will always be able to destroy your children for no good reason, and the small nations of the world will always fear you as trigger-happy bullies.

Time to fuck off Smog...

Posted by: Rev. Bigdumbchimp | May 25, 2009 8:27 PM

Where the he'll do you get the idea we think military service shelters one from all criticism?

Posted by: Nominal Egg | May 25, 2009 8:33 PM

I was wondering if anyone (er...else?) was planning to watch "The Link" on THC at 9*.

Thanks for the reminder, SC!
I had forgotten that was on tonight.

Posted by: pcarini | May 25, 2009 8:39 PM

Several people, for instance, wrote variations of "...but in this case..." that left no reason to believe they had any rational basis for what metric they might allow to mitigate their opinion.

I'm guessing that most of these other posters figured it was so obvious that it didn't need spelling out. The difference in this case is that the parents are harming their child through neglect. Parental rights do NOT include the right to kill or seriously injure one's child, through neglect or directly. You're thick tamPAX, but obviously not absorbent...

Posted by: whitebird | May 25, 2009 8:47 PM

Huh huh. Guess I'm not alone in my Jumble enthusiasm - my brain saw tmaxPA as tamPAX immediately.

Posted by: David | May 25, 2009 9:02 PM

Where are all these claims coming from that Daniel Hauser is mentally retarded?? I just did a Google search and can't find one such media statement. I did read that he cannot read, evidently because his parents have not taught him to. But that's a far cry from being mentally retarded.

Either way of course he is not mentally competent to make the decision not to be treated.

Posted by: Toni | May 25, 2009 9:06 PM

Some crazy upstream said: "This is all part of God's plan, Atheists."

Hmmmm... god gave this kid cancer on purpose?

Posted by: pcarini | May 25, 2009 9:20 PM

tmaxPA:

What I am saying is that we need a more rational rather than emotional basis for our decision-making in terms of medicine as well as the broader thing we call 'health care'.

What about either the doctors' or the judge's decisions weren't rational? The facts on which to base the decisions are as straightforward as anybody could hope for. The child is extremely likely to die without treatment, and almost certain to live given treatment. The doctors didn't just pull this prognosis out of thin air, they know the likelihood of each outcome from previous cases. I trust the judge was fully aware of the applicable statutes and case law. I can't imagine either the doctors or the judge making their decisions in an emotional vacuum, (we are talking about a child's life,) but reality has come down solidly in their corner here.

Posted by: Martha | May 25, 2009 9:28 PM

Everyone seems to be in agreement that the kid needs treatment by an oncologist, despite the parent's wishes. Not a hard question.

A harder question is the problem of parents who don't teach their kids to read and fill their heads with nonsense. When should the state step in? I thought even home schooled kids have to meet some minimum requirements in Minnesota. (I know that in some states there are no-minimum requirements for home schooling.)

Posted by: Mike K | May 25, 2009 9:43 PM

"Since I got in early on this thread, I'd like to try to open the discussion up to the counter-claim. Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment, and by extension have the right to do so for our children?"

Adults have the right to refuse medical treatment, of course. I don't think anyone here has argued otherwise. But when it comes to making decisions for your child - because parents are indeed responsible for making certain decisions for their children, including medical decisions - you may have the right to refuse treatment if that refusal is reasonable and in the best interest of the child. But when that refusal is clearly unreasonable and not in the best interest of the child, we call that neglect or abuse. It's not just medical decisions; there are many things you can do as a parent that are neglectful or abusive, and many decisions you can make on their behalf that are neglectful or abusive, and the government rightly has the authority to step in and take over.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about that. Religious beliefs do not trump science - period. Deal with it, because the world is otherwise passing you by.

Posted by: Jafafa Hots | May 25, 2009 10:06 PM

"But in truth, the air or preciousness with which you Americans surround your armed forces--the most terrifying killing force in the world--reminds me how out-of-step I am with so many of the posters here. You may not believe in God, but as long as you steep your children in this quasi-mystical notion that military service is somehow sanctified, and that service in the armed forces negates all criticism, war will always be an early resort, corrupted politicians will always be able to destroy your children for no good reason, and the small nations of the world will always fear you as trigger-happy bullies."

On another blog I frequent someone posted a Memorial Day comment, the usual "fighting to preserve our freedoms" stuff...
A couple of non-American posters meekly suggested that the post was inappropriate in that section which prohibits discussion of politics and religion on the grounds that it was political, and should be in the "off topic" section.

HOWLS of outrage followed, of course, from many Proud Americans, how dare you suggest that supporting the military is in any way political.

I kept my trap shut. Of course it's political, but this is a country where "honorable military service" and "protecting our freedoms" are the unquestionable truth, dammit and who wouldn't be PROUD for their son to kill and perhaps be killed in fighting to protect the vulnerably most powerful nation the world has ever known from those evil, villainous 3rd-world peasants with our oil under their land?

Posted by: maditude | May 25, 2009 10:11 PM

2 or 3 days ago, the Strib published some comments from the kid's father. Apparently, the family's distrust of conventional medicine stems from problems during the boy's birth -- no doctor showed up, and the baby wasn't getting oxygen for some time, leading to brain damage.

Posted by: amphiox | May 25, 2009 10:25 PM

Competent adults have the right to refuse medical treatment, but even here the right is not absolute. For example, you can be quarantined and treated against your will if you have a dangerous communicable disease that would pose a threat to those around you if you were not treated (which diseases and in which circumstances this can occur is strictly defined by law).

Parents have a right to make medical decisions for their children, including the right to refuse medical treatment, but again this right is not absolute. Parents are obligated to choose in the reasonable best interest of the child, so life saving treatment cannot be refused unless a case can be made that 1)the likelihood of success is low enough and/or 2)the potential for adverse side effects high enough that reasonable benefit (survival vs quality of life) cannot be guaranteed. So for example, if in a similar case to this one, the proposed chemotherapy has an expected success rate of only 55% (rather than 95%), and is known to have a number of terrible side effects, a parent could reasonably refuse treatment for their child, on the grounds that a reasonable adult in a similar situation might also choose to refuse treatment. Alternately, if the proposed treatment is not curative, but can only be expected to extend survival say 6 months to a year, and again there is the likelihood of a number of debilitating side effects that will significantly reduce the child's quality of life, this is also a situation where a parent can reasonably refuse offered medical treatment.

In no universal-access single-payer health care system that I know of can any competent adult be treated against their will except in the special situations mentioned above. If anything, there is logical grounds for arguing that certain people in such a situation should be refused medical treatment (ie self-inflicted illness via stupidity draining resources from the communal system, such as a smoker with lung cancer, or drunk driver with severe MVA head injury), but no one with any iota of compassion would seriously support even this argument anyways.

Posted by: Skipbidder | May 25, 2009 10:36 PM

@81 New England Bob--

"No need for something more recent. That was the SCOTUS ruling 65 years ago and it has not been changed since."

The case isn't in my con law book, and by what is available via internet, it looks like a child labor law case. (Jehovah's Witness can't have a religious exemption to have a 9 year old sell religious pamphlets.)

And there certainly have been some changes since. Wisconsin v. Yoder allowed that old order Amish could remove their children from mandated education at 8th grade.

Multiple states have mature minor laws regarding consenting to or refusing medical treatments (which do not appear to have been tested in SCOTUS).

It was surprising to me that there wasn't an explicit US case about parental refusal based on religious grounds. There have been multiple JW cases, I expected that one of them would have been about transfusions.

Oh well.

Posted by: plum grenville | May 25, 2009 11:06 PM

David | May 25, 2009 9:02 PM

Where are all these claims coming from that Daniel Hauser is mentally retarded?? I just did a Google search and can't find one such media statement. I did read that he cannot read, evidently because his parents have not taught him to. But that's a far cry from being mentally retarded.

Either way of course he is not mentally competent to make the decision not to be treated.

It's pretty clear if you read his testimony. He doesn't sound like an average 13-year-old, or even like whatever an average sheltered and illiterate 13-year-old sounds like.

His answers to the judge's questions tended to be short and short on detail. He appeared not to understand even mildly abstract questions. He didn't seem to understand what information to volunteer or emphasize to benefit his case.

According to Colleen Hauser, there was some kind of problem with her pregnancy or Daniel's delivery. (The details of this were sealed.)

Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | May 25, 2009 11:09 PM

Happy Kiwi: I enjoyed Smoggy's contributions, and hope that he makes the occasional guest appearance in the future. Though as a regular he could get old, in small doses he's hilarious.

Posted by: Otto | May 25, 2009 11:10 PM

Toni #79,#80,
"Hmmmm... god gave this kid cancer on purpose?"

Don't you know, god loves Daniel so much he can't bear not to have him in heaven?

That seems to be a solace used by religious people.

Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | May 25, 2009 11:20 PM

Walton-

I agree with most of what you said, but I disagree on two points.

Parents certainly do not have any sort of "rights" over their children

I am going through a divorce right now, and you are dead wrong on this point. Just to name 2, there are the rights of legal and physical custody.

also,

If, however, with this knowledge, he still refuses treatment, then the State should let him die

Daniel Hauser is mentally retarded. He is not competant to make these decisions himself, as is clear if you read his testimony to the judge. He does'nt even know the name of the Catholic church, or the name of his priest, whose services he attends every two weeks.

Does'nt mental incompetance preclude the ability to make all choices for oneself?

Posted by: St. Tabby Lavalamp | May 25, 2009 11:58 PM

tmaxPA wrote:

I'm very unimpressed by the resistance to discussion some of you childish lamers have shown.

Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | May 26, 2009 12:23 AM

Orac said-

No, Daniel is not mentally retarded, as far as I have been able to ascertain from news reports and his testimony; he is learning disabled.

Meh! I stand by my political incorrectness.

No, that guy in the wheelchair is not a "cripple", he is "mobility-challenged".

From Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary-
Retarded: slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development : characterized by mental retardation

My 9 year old son knows his pastor's name, and has for several years. He knows, and can state easily what decisions are made in the family by his father, and what decisions are made by his mother.

Posted by: bastion of sass | May 26, 2009 12:41 AM

Benjamin Franklin @ 106 wrote:

Meh! I stand by my political incorrectness.

No, that guy in the wheelchair is not a "cripple", he is "mobility-challenged".

From Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary-
Retarded: slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development : characterized by mental retardation

Individuals with a learning disability are not intellectually slow or mentally retarded. They do not have low IQs. Many with LDs have average or above average IQs (Low IQ individuals who may have a LD are typically given the MR diagnosis, since it's hard to determine what learning issues are caused by MR, as opposed to an LD, for those with low IQs.)

LDs are neurological disorders that result in learning issues like dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and certain sensory processing disorders.

Posted by: Tapir | May 26, 2009 1:19 AM

@94 Skipbidder -

I did some quick poking around on Westlaw, and I didn't find anything from SCOTUS that addresses your particular question. You're right that SCOTUS has heard a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses cases, but a whole lot of those have been free speech cases, presenting issues very different from this one. It may be that SCOTUS is reluctant to take this kind of case because it's a trifecta of Things That Scare Federal Courts: religion (generally a minefield), family law (generally a state law matter), and medicine (beyond judges' expertise).

However, if you're interested, a couple federal cases did pop up that might be interesting, including Jehovah's Witnesses in State of Wash. v. King County Hospital Unit No. 1 (Harborview), from the Western District of Washington in 1967, and P.J. ex rel. Jensen v. Utah, from the Utah District in 2006. I haven't looked at them because it's time for me to go to sleep, but those might be places to start looking.

Posted by: raven | May 26, 2009 1:36 AM

Technically, learning disabled might not be the same as retarded, referring to such conditions as dyslexian and ADHD.

But in popular usage, it is often used as a euphemism for retarded. The son couldn't recognize the word "the" and didn't seem to have much in the way of long term memory, being unable to name either his church or priest.

Details are scarce but the ones available don't sound so great. The parents don't come across as retarded but they don't sound too smart or eduated either. They are simultaneously Roman Catholics and members of a fake Mormon offshoot cult, the Nemenhah and don't see any contradiction.

Posted by: FierceGeekChick | May 26, 2009 2:08 AM

@50-53

IQ scores are corrected so they fall on a normal distribution, so the median and mean have the same value.

Posted by: oriole | May 26, 2009 3:22 AM

makarios said: "So do atheists reject natural remedies on all counts or only if the parents are religious?"

I don't know about other atheists, but I don't care whether remedies are "natural" or not; I care whether they work. Lots of medicines are derived from herbs, etc. - when they work, doctors use them, then they get labeled as dangerous chemical conventional medicine, and therefore of course are rejected by "natural healers", who prefer to use herbs etc. which haven't been shown to work.

If any of those "natural remedies" happen to turn out to be useful, then they also become dangerous chemical conventional medicine, and the woo folk gravitate to something else which is unproved.

Posted by: Faithless | May 26, 2009 4:35 AM

OK, so the woman's problem as set out in this interview is that she seems to have acquired the impression that medical intervention must be comfortable and painless.

Question is: does that make her think that wacky religious 'cures' are better, or wast it the fact that the wacky religious 'cures' are comfortable and painless make her think that proper medicine should be as well?

The other thing is that she says several times that the chemotherapy isn't working, but we don't get a whisper of how she makes that judgment, on what evidence she bases her evaluation. Perhaps she expected the tumour to jump out of his body, infect a herd of pigs and make them rush off and drown themselves...

Posted by: Walton | May 26, 2009 5:38 AM

Do you have the right to kill yourself?

Don't know about your part of the world, but where I live the authorities take a very dim view of such thinking. They take it very seriously, and will do what it takes to stop you. You have to be restrained and given shots, that's what will happen. And the courts will support their actions.

That, I think, is one of the things wrong with our society. My life is my own, not the State's, and the State has no right to prevent me from ending it should I so wish,.

There is a fundamental conflict of values here, in fact. It relates to some of the points that the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin drew out in his discussion of Roe v Wade (Freedom's Law, ch 3). When we say that the State ought to "protect life", we can mean two different things. We may mean that, as the State ought to protect the rights and interests of individuals from interference by others, and we acknowledge that individuals generally have a right not to be killed and an interest in not dying, the State therefore ought to protect life. (Dworkin calls this a derivative value of life; life is valuable because of its value to the individuals who possess it.) Or we may mean, conversely, that "human life" has some intrinsic value, quite apart to its bearing on the interests of the individuals who possess it, and ought to be protected.

Obviously, the first justification for protecting life can't justify banning abortion, euthanasia or suicide - because, regarding abortion, a foetus is (very clearly) not recognised by law as a human being with rights and interests; and regarding euthanasia and suicide, where an individual wants to die, no individual rights or interests can be in issue. The second justification, by contrast, would justify banning all these things; if human life has an intrinsic value, then it must be protected even against its owner. But I submit that the second justification is a load of bullshit, and can't be sustained except by reference to religious dogma. Life is not "sacred", and it has no intrinsic value; life is valuable only because of its importance to the individuals who possess it. If an individual wants to die, the State has no right to prevent him or her from doing so. Just my two cents.

Posted by: Lilly de Lure | May 26, 2009 6:26 AM

Walton said:

That, I think, is one of the things wrong with our society. My life is my own, not the State's, and the State has no right to prevent me from ending it should I so wish,.

The problem is IIRC that Daniel Hauser most definitely does not want to end his life - he's just terrified of the pain of chemotherapy and has been convinced by his parents and their wacky pseudo-native american cult that it will not help him.

We are not dealing with a fully informed, mature person making their own decisions here - we are dealing with a systematically misinformed, terrified and learning disabled child who has demonstrated to a judge a complete inability to understand the issues involved with and consequences of "his" decision.

Libertarian philosophy (such as it is) relies on the people making their own decisions to be fully rational and fully informed. Since Daniel Hauser is demonstrably neither just now, I would argue applying such principles to this case is problematic, to say the least.

Posted by: Walton | May 26, 2009 6:38 AM

Clarification: I was responding to Alan's comments. I wasn't necessarily applying that to this case; I realise that the child's lack of understanding of his situation casts doubt on his capacity to make choices. I don't have an easy answer to this one.

And I did not mention the word "libertarian" anywhere in my post.

Posted by: srdha | May 26, 2009 6:53 AM

i gust want to say some thing "great job"

Update your Twitter randomly according to your intrest Or, from Rss Feed Or, from your own tweet message list Or, Any combination of the above three http://feedmytwitter.com

Posted by: T_U_T | May 26, 2009 7:12 AM

blockquote fail

Posted by: strange gods before me | May 26, 2009 7:36 AM

And I did not mention the word "libertarian" anywhere in my post.

Yeah, just like Reagan didn't say "racial segregation." But you might as well have, with your self-congratulatory trumpeting:

As someone who is consistently opposed to coercion

No you're not. You're deeply inconsistent. And that's a good thing. That's what distinguishes you from Three Laws Safe robot with a positronic brain full of actuarial tables.

On the subject of coercive taxation for welfare, you recently said:

The reality is, I don't have a really coherent, well-thought-out justification for drawing the line where I draw it. It just seems morally right that there should be some provision of basic welfare so that the poor and unfortunate don't starve to death.

And you did not appear to accept the justification I gave you. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/daniel_hauser_might_live_now.php#comment-1638465

So you can stop pretending to represent some thoroughly rational ideology. And don't feel bad about it. Humane exceptions are generally preferable to brutal consistency.

Posted by: strange gods before me | May 26, 2009 7:48 AM

Can you do harm to yourself, or have harm done to you?

Depends. If for the purpose of decoration, and you're a competent adult, then yes. But if the purpose is for the infliction of pain, then no.

BDSM comes to mind. Also http://suspension.org/

Posted by: Valis | May 26, 2009 8:27 AM

@David Marjanovic: I don't know where you got your information from, but you are completely wrong. Here in South Africa we have a national network of public hospitals and clinics that provide FREE UNIVERSAL health care to ALL. All doctors are in fact required to serve a year in public service after finishing their internship and qualifying as full doctors. We also have a large number of Cuban doctors serving in the public health sector.

Also, ALL children up to the age of fourteen (this is going up to age eighteen soon) receive a social grant from the government every month. This also applies to disabled people and people over sixty. The Communist party is one member of the Tri-Partite Alliance that rules this country, along with COSATU, the biggest trade union. Our country has taken an even bigger step towards socialism now with the appointment of Jacob Zuma as president. Sixty percent of the population receives some sort of monetary grant from the government. I don't think there's another country in the world that can say that (obviously excluding places like the UAE and Monaco).

So in future, please make sure of your facts before spreading dis-information about my country. Thank you.

Posted by: Bruce Gorton | May 26, 2009 9:20 AM

Valis | May 26, 2009 8:27 AM

Okay...

Our public hospitals suck to the point that generally getting sick means you need a medical aid in order to stay out of them and go to the at least reasonable private hospitals. This is part of the legacy of Thabo Mbeki being a braindead .

Security is similarly privatised by worthlessness, thanks to that pinhead in chief putting Jackie Selebi in charge of the cops. Nowadays high walls, electric fencing and gated suburbs are status symbols, and the cops hire security guards.

Our president, got out of being tried for taking bribes and cheating his taxes on the rather flimsy grounds that the charges were being timed around political events, not on the grounds that the evidence was bad.

This means we have a strong possibility of our president being for sale and, if the details of the Thint bribe are true, being for sale in relatively easy installments.

People always talk about how this last set of elections are a move to the left - last I checked your average worker couldn't afford to buy favours with a Mercedes S class.

I sort of hope it all signals a move to the left, the sort of leftwing which translates into government working for the people, but I am not all that optimistic.

I think Jacob Zuma just means more of the same stuff we had under Thabo Mbeki - lots of grand sounding ideas and no implementation, leaving us paying liberal taxes for libertarian government.

Posted by: llewelly | May 26, 2009 11:06 AM

tmaxPA | May 25, 2009 6:27 PM:

Is there nobody here that believes that we have the right to refuse medical treatment, and by extension have the right to do so for our children?

You say 'by extension' as if the ability to refuse medical treatment to others were a natural extension of one's own right to refuse medical treatment for oneself.

Posted by: tomh | May 26, 2009 12:20 PM

@#129 Anonymous wrote:
It is a basic legal principle that the rights and wellbeing of the child take precedence. This is clearly established by every law regarding child abuse available, as well as several laws regarding inheritance.

This certainly sounds good in theory, but the reality is much different. Because of the privileged position that religion holds in America there are all sorts of laws that allow abuse, such as withholding medical treatment, if done for religious reasons. Most states have religious exemptions to child abuse or neglect laws, and six states, (Oregon, Iowa, Ohio, Delaware, West Virginia, and Arkansas), allow religious defenses to homicide or manslaughter charges (for crimes against children only, there are no religious defenses for crimes against adults). We have the Christian Science Church to thank for most of this, a tiny sect but one with powerful lobbyists in all 50 states.

Posted by: Benjamin Franklin | May 26, 2009 1:30 PM

Orac said-

It's not "political incorrectness." It's ignorance on your part.

I respectfully disagree.

According to the Merck Manuals online Medical Library for patients and caregivers-

Mental retardation/intellectual disability is significantly subaverage intellectual functioning present from birth or early infancy, causing limitations in the ability to conduct normal activities of daily living.

The long-used term “mental retardation” has acquired an undesirable social stigma. Because of this stigma, doctors and health care practitioners have begun replacing it with the term "intellectual disability." Because this change is recent, the term "mental retardation/intellectual disability" (MR/ID) is used to mark the transition in terminology.

MR/ID is not a specific medical disorder like pneumonia or strep throat, and it is not a mental health disorder. People with MR/ID have significantly below average intellectual functioning that limits their ability to cope with two or more activities of normal daily living (adaptive skills). These activities include the ability to communicate; live at home; take care of oneself, including making decisions; participate in leisure, social, school, and work activities; and be aware of personal health and safety.

People with MR/ID have varying degrees of impairment.

From reading the transcript of Daniel's testimony and the Judge's ruling, it is apparent that Daniel is limited in his ability to communicate, the court found that he is incapable of making decisions, and that he is not aware of his personal health and safety. That's three adaptive skills he has shown to be lacking.

I agree that nowhere has it been shown what his IQ has been measured to be, but if Colleen wouldn't submit Daniel to x-rays to determine the status of his Hodgkins, I would suspect that it is at least possible that she never submitted him for intellectual testing as well.

I therefore stand by my statement that Daniel is mentally retarded, as it is defined above and in prior posts.

Try to focus on the ignorance of his mother, which is evidenced, as opposed to mine, which you incorrectly assumed.

Posted by: truthspeaker | May 26, 2009 1:43 PM

Posted by: makarios | May 25, 2009 7:54 PM

So do atheists reject natural remedies on all counts or only if the parents are religious?

We only reject the natural remedies that don't work.

Posted by: mk | May 26, 2009 3:17 PM

@ Ben Franklin:

Not that this really needed to be said out loud, but it seems Dr. Orac is correct.

http://www.faqs.org/health/Sick-V3/Mental-Retardation.html
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=20174

Posted by: tmaxPA | May 26, 2009 5:22 PM

To the obnoxious goofball writing as "nominal egg":

"Resistance to discussion"??? You got dozens of responses!

Indeed, and you were one of the first out of the gate, with probably the lamest 'response' in the whole thread. And positive proof of a resistance to discussion.

You started with a weak premise (parents have a right to murder their children), and then when the responses are specific and consistent, you deride them as "twaddle".

See, there's what I'm talking about. Are you actually claiming you can't recognize ANY distinction at all between causing someone to die and allowing someone to die? Do you really think there's no conflict between the ability of "society" to over-ride a parent's medical decisions and the liberty of a free society, just because this particular case was more clear cut than that?

See, if you're willing to discuss things, we just... discuss them. We don't find hair-trigger reasons to go off and deride, ignore, misrepresent and ridicule, and then pretend we're winning the argument.

It wasn't the 'consistent and specific' responses that were twaddle. They were simply repetitive and obvious. The 'twaddle' was the non-response responses, like yours. Instead of spending all your time being snide and snarky, try to post actual honest opinions and then we can calmly and honestly discuss them.

For an example, truthspeaker@143 wrote:

If the kid had a kind of cancer where treatment only had a 20% chance of working, I'd be sympathetic to the parents. That's not the case here.

Way back in #53, I wrote:

Several people, for instance, wrote variations of "...but in this case..." that left no reason to believe they had any rational basis for what metric they might allow to mitigate their opinion.

So I ask you... what about 25%? 33.3? 51?

I tend to think the whole "society has a right to dictate medical treatment" makes sense when it comes to things like vaccines. Protecting the public health is fine. And, sure, if the case is obvious, like this one, well, then it is obvious. I'm wondering what we do when it isn't so obvious, and we can't just rely on the supposedly good and kindly instincts of some apparently very nasty people to come up with the right answer.

Posted by: Steve_C | May 26, 2009 7:22 PM

Yeah because a deluded godbot should be trusted to pray rather than treat her child for a curable disease.

More conservative bullshit.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | May 26, 2009 7:36 PM

I think that we all need to acknowledge that very few of us, if any, know what the hell we are doing, and therefore to tell someone else what they should do with their children is only arrogance.

Posted by: John Morales | May 27, 2009 1:48 AM

MikeB:

The concepts of liberty and freedom seem totally foreign to this blog. Everyone here seems to worship at the altar of medicine and government.

Posted by: Rorschach | May 27, 2009 7:08 AM

Retarded fundie moron @ 149 babbled:

I, for one, am very mindfull of the mistakes that medical science has made throughout the ages, and, I am quite sure, continues to make. If humanity survives long enough, chemotherapy, vaccines, and antibiotics will all be assigned to that scrap heap that already contains blood-letting, cocaine, smoking, salt pills and snake oil.

I am very mindfull of the fact that fundie moron is guilty of praying on the altar of the mighty god of analogy fail.

I find the concept of government ownership of children to be abhorent, and forced chemotherapy of anyone, especially children, to be shocking.

Yes,death by parental neglect through imbecility is obviously much less shocking.To retards like you,anyway.
Pathetic loser.

Posted by: Rorschach | May 27, 2009 9:22 AM

Reminded me strongly of the late and somewhat lamented Smoggy, actually.

Speak for yourself.

Posted by: Liz | May 28, 2009 7:28 AM

To tmaxPA @ 148

"Are you actually claiming you can't recognize ANY distinction at all between causing someone to die and allowing someone to die? Do you really think there's no conflict between the ability of "society" to over-ride a parent's medical decisions and the liberty of a free society, just because this particular case was more clear cut than that?"

If you allow someone to die when you could have easily saved their life at no risk to yourself or anyone else, then no, there isn't much difference between that and causing them to die.
Inching out over thin ice to rescue someone is inherantly dangerous (although it still happens, due to the rescuer's bravery), but wading into a paddling pool to retrieve a small child isn't.

Adults have the right to make their own medical decisions. They have the RESPONSIBILITY to make them for their children.

Parents are not allowed to deliberatly put their children at risk- leaving them in unventilated cars in summer, etc. When it comes to medical treatment, though, the definition of 'risk' is rather more complex.

In this particular case, there is (or, at least, was,) a very high probability of the treatment being totally sucessful. Chemotherapy is very unpleasant, but it's short term. If the prognosis had been that the cancer was terminal and chemotherapy would only have extended his life for up to a year, then opting out of treatment other than paliative care would be understandable.
And inbetween these two extreams are a myriad of other possibilities.
We can't make hard and fast rules about how to react in any given situation, they have to be decided on a case-by-case basis by those concerned- the patient, the parents and the doctors.

In this case, the options were almost certain life versus almost certain death, and the boy does not, by all accounts, seem to understand the full details of his situation (I haven't been able to read the transcript of his testimony as yet, as my link to it won't load).
If he did fully understand the situation, and understood that he was very likely to die without treatment, it would probably make a difference. But it seems that he didn't.
He was being put at risk, and that's child endangerment.
If there are to be limits in a 'free society', I'd say that's a very good one.

Also consider the story PZ Myers linked to earlier this month-
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/45850182.html

Posted by: CatMN | June 1, 2009 10:37 AM

Too many uninformed people in this world call anyone with a learning disability mentally retarded which puts us all back 25 years in our intellectual development.

Daniel is not mentally retarded. He has a learning disability in the area of reading which is disclosed in the transcript of his testimony in the judge's chambers. He can read words but was too embarrassed to read the statement he signed out loud in front of the judge and 3 attorneys knowing that he was not at the same reading level as his peer group. His mother asked that Daniel be excused from the room while she explained his learning disability. Most 13 year boys are already self-conscious and many without a learning disability would be reluctant to read in front of a judge and 3 attorneys. Being able to read and comprehend is completely different from reading out loud in front of a crowd. How many of you dreaded speech class? Daniel's responses to the judge's questions were competent and I commend the judge for his compassion and understanding of a young man embarrassed by all the attention he is getting.

His mother is not a lunatic. How quick we are to judge people and label them. She is a frightened mother who loves all her children and has their best interest at heart. She did a lot of research on the internet to find out everything she could about her son's disease and researched their options. She came across the Nemenhah Band and their "do no harm" not "do nothing" philosophy - many of their treatments are based on ancient Chinese and Native American natural herbs which are the basis of many of the synthetic drugs we pay drug companies to manufacture.

The reason she fled with Daniel is because he was going to run away from home to avoid further chemo treatments. Better that he was with his mother than on the streets so that they could make an informed decision together and come back for treatment.

Daniel had a blood clot as a result of the first chemo treatment and was in the hospital for 11 days. He knew that the blood clot could kill him. His mother's sister died from chemo treatment. Daniel and his family had some legitimate fears of chemo.

The family wanted complementary and alternative medicine administered (CAM) along with the chemo. They wanted to be able to see how he was doing after each treatment rather than commit to the entire regime and to be able to work some flexibility into the plan.

Again you ingnore the late effects of chemo in Hodgkin's Lymphoma patients:
Because of these late effects on health and development, regular follow-up exams are important. Late effects may include problems with the following:

Development of sex organs in males.
Fertility (ability to have children).
Thyroid, heart, or lungs.
An increased risk of developing a second primary cancer.
Bone growth and development.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/childhodgkins/Patient/page7