I wondered what took him so long (maybe diving into heated debates is not his style), but fellow ScienceBlogger The Cheerful Oncologist has weighed on on the Cherrix case, in which a 16-year-old has refused chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's disease. And he would know better than I what the treatment options are for relapsed Hodgkin's disease. Personally, I'd like to see him chime in on such issues more often.
More like this
Teen can opt out of chemotherapy.
The 16-year-old Virginia boy may undergo radiation and alternative treatments.
This story has been reported before by Orac and others, but I just wanted to add a couple of highly biased comments to the latest development in the case of a teenager who took…
Ensconced at a conference center in North Carolina near Abel's and Bora's home turf since Saturday, I appear to have missed an update on the story of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. As you may recall, he is a 16 year old who fought for the right to pursue "alternative" therapy over evidence-based…
The Cheerful Oncologist, noting my recent post about the relapse of Abraham Cherrix's lymphoma in the lung, has done an analysis from--of course!--an oncologist's viewpoint. Given that I don't treat lymphoma, other than doing the occasional lymph node biopsy to diagnose it, his viewpoint is well…
One of the gratifying things about having been blogging so long—nearly 13 years now!—is that you start to see stories that you wrote about a long time ago resurface, allowing you to see the resolution. For instance, I've not infrequently written about people who, mistakenly believing the…
I'm glad he did also and will go over and congratulate/encourage him. This is one series of alt med cases where I feel that one should really be an MD to hold forth on the topic. However, that doesn't stop many other folks, does it?
Its a travesty how this case was handled by the media, and its sad that more oncologists, like The Cheerful Oncolgist, were not included on TV and newspapers, as well as hodgkins patients who have gone on to lead full lives after receiving transplants for relapsed hodgkins.
Instead, we were bombarded with news about a few cases where alt meds appeared to have worked, without discussion of the more likely reasons for their success that had nothing to do with the sham treatments they received. And, a child who's making a choice that will lead to his death was lauded as a hero rather than as seriously misguided.
I am seriously disappointed with how this case was handled by the media.
In a more callous moment, I feel that the outcome can be summed up as allowing Darwin to run its course.
Abel also has weighed in with a wonderful post on the topic-- see it here: http://scienceblogs.com/terrasig/2006/08/cherrix_refusal_of_pediatric_c…