An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer: Who’s to blame?

At the heart of this is an assertion of ‘the child’ as property, here property of ‘the tribe’ as opposed to the more familiar ‘child as property of the parent’. In both cases though the needs, concerns and beliefs of the adults take precedence over the best interests of the child. It’s significant that this is in direct contravention of Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Canada is a signatory. Clearly though abject obeisance to primitivism is a stronger guiding light in Canadian Law than a broad principle of protection that applies the most vulnerable citizens in any society.

Great post. As a pediatrician from this area and acquainted with some of the physicians involved, I’ve been following this case closely and am appalled by the outcome. This is devastating for everyone involved, including the (some, not all) members of the Six Nations community currently celebrating it.

I can not relate, seeing how I am white and live on another continent. Still, the logic here is… Well, there is none.

If the girls were undergoing traditional Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe treatment I could at least see where the push against interventions comes from. It would be misguided or perhaps cynical use of individual’s tragedy to protect the percieved interest of aboriginal culture. Agreeable, not, understandable, yes.

But all I am getting out of this case, mind you – as a total outsider, is a giant dose of hypocrisy. My juvenile imagination is creating an image of stereotypical injun, headdress and all, saying “We will not listen to the lies of the white man because we have the help and wisdom of the white man.” Yes, it is insensitive, but sadly fitting due to involvment of Clement.

I can only presume that the Six Nations of the Grand River and the Mississaugas of New Credit believe she is using primarily traditional medicine. The treatment by the Hippocrates Center is a separate thing altogether, unrelated to the traditional medical treatment.

Excellent, Orac!

The problem has come about with this absurd need to avoid anything resembling ‘racism’ or ‘cultural imperialism’ (on the liberal side) and ‘religious interference’ (on the conservative side) we have a whole muddle headed concept that no matter how freakin stupid a culture’s ideas may be, they must be respected (as in taken seriously).

Politicians know that if they jump in one of these issues, they’re likely to be vilified.

Steven Novella #11 “I wonder if that provides a legal grounds for challenge?”

Probably needs a Canadian Lawyer to answer that but sadly ratification of the UN Charter does not ensure its inclusion in the Law of the signatory countries – rather an additional step of formal adoption into national Law is required. There’s much hypocrisy with countries signing these Conventions on the basis that it applies to other(by implication less civilised) peoples, but is not needed by the fine upstanding ‘developed world’ etc. Canada does have a Charter of Rights which it could be argued implies all the provisions of the UNCRC apply to Cabada, but I suspect it would require someone with the right to represent the child to actually pursue it. Obviously the parents and the tribe will argue they are the childs commanding representatives.

As far as my admittedly limited knowledge of Canadian aboriginal traditional medicine goes, I believe that the largest part is shamanistic. There are certainly traditional herbal remedies used, but there isn’t a vast array of them, especially when a particular tribe is considered. There has been some spread of certain things in relatively recent times, but in some cases it breaks with local traditions. (Case on point – my brother used to teach on reserves in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. He told of one of the elder women remarking something to the effect of “why are they stinking up the place with that stuff” when she smelled sweetgrass being burned. Sweetgrass burning is an important thing for some tribes, but it was no part of the old traditions of that tribe.)
I strongly suspect the McMaster hospital would collectively bend over backwards to accommodate traditional ceremonies and even traditional medicines for the girl while she was in hospital receiving chemo. But no, so horrible foreign quack had to shove his nose in.

The policy states no business solicitation but I see a post about “bio-mat” quackery, so they aren’t enforcing that policy.

Another very long post. (sigh) But only the first part addresses the topic. The rest is personal background. If you’re inclined to read the stuff about the First Nations case, no need to read below the break unless you really want to…

Yesterday in the SBM thread, anyone who supported First Nations autonomy in any way got accused of excusing/enabling the deaths of these girls. But nobody was doing that. Nobody was saying a parent should have the right to substitute woo for chemo for a kid with leukemia, ‘traditional Native’ or ‘Florida Man wacko’. There were also heavy doses of racism in the comments, not that i imagine the authors are active haters, just making some thoughtless jabs at the First Nations folks in expressing concern for the girls.

Orac states his position pretty clearly above, and has incorporated some proper reflections on yesterdays exchange. He admits he’s placing priority on one moral element of the case, rejecting others, and doesn’t care if he’s criticized for it. That’s honest and fair. A lot of the posts in the SBM thread yesterday were simply dismissing the other angles as if hey didn’t exist, or were petty, and thus that even mentioning them was endorsing woo and infanticide.

First, let me say I am appalled by what the Sault family has done to Makayla, and if she dies, I would support the Canadian prosecutors in filing criminal charges against her parents, and against Brian Clement. In the hope that it’s not too late for the other girl, I urged a social media campaign directed at the First Nations leaders to persuade them the best course to maintain the larger legal principle of autonomy they have just won is to get the girl into chemo so she survives.

But I still have a couple of small bones to pick with Orac. Not attacks or denunciations. Factual issues mainly.

It is argued that the Canadian government today shouldn’t make sure that this First Nations girl receives effective therapy

Well, yes and no. The problem is that “Canadian” is a bit of a red herring. I can only speak with certainty for myself, of course, but I would not at all contest the general proposition “government should make sure First Nations children receive effective therapy.” Just speculating, of course, I’d guess there’d be no disagreement with that among other commenters in the SBM thread. The question is ‘which government?’ The fact is First Nations people, by law are only quasi-Canadian. The Nations (each individually) have a limited autonomy which makes them ‘Canadian citizens’ in some senses, but not in others. So the legal argument is “the Canadian government does not have the authority to make sure this First Nations girl receives effective therapy.” Which is pretty cut-and-dried, and IMHO ought to be mentioned as part of the discussion.

Which still leaves the moral argument “the Canadian government should make sure this First Nations girl receives effective therapy anyway.” Which I take to be Orac’s position above. That’s not cut-and-dried, either way. First, the history of abuse and oppression of the First Nations, including the residential schools program, cannot simply be dismissed. Second, in light of that, a court decision to force the Child Welfare agency to take the girl into custody would be an alarming precedent that would have consequences far beyond the case of one girl with leukemia, and would be a net moral minus, all things considered.

The decision was not cowardly. It was a correct application of the law. And as is always the case in the justice systems of democracy, the higher principles of the law take precedence over the specific case. We do not convict felons if their Miranda rights have been violated. In individual cases, justice is not served as a result. However, the alternative, giving free reign to police to coerce confessions from innocent suspectscoerce confessions from innocent suspects, is far worse.

Going back to the “what government?” question, I don’t think anyone in the SBM thread was arguing “the Canadian government should defer to the mother even though the mother’s choice will, unless reversed, lead to the death of her child.” I certainly would find such an argument reprehensible.
Unfortunately, the language in Judge Edward’s decision does seem to affirm ‘parents’ rights’ in life-or-death decisions, and that’s very bad.

The argument then, is that The Six Nations and New Credit bands must — by law, and by moral and ethical standards viewed in the long term — be included in the government apparatus that makes decisions on child welfare interventions on behalf of children from those nations.

Thus, culpability for the deaths that may result from these cases would rest to some extent on the ‘governments’ of the Aboriginal nations. This is somewhat problematic though, as they don’t necessarily have the resources or authority to set up their own child welfare agencies, though that is their stated goal.

Finally, on murkier ground to be sure, there ought to be a distinction between community ‘sacrifice’ in liberation struggles, and ‘sacrifice’ to spiritual dogma. This should be moot in this case because the people at risk of death are minor children. It seems Makayla Sault is adamant about leaving her fate in the Hands of God, and not returning to chemo, and if the Lord takes her, that’s all part of The Divine Plan so it’s OK. I no just world I can imagine do 11-year olds get to make that call. However the discussion fanned out, as one might expect, to any sacrifice to dogma, including adults.

But there is something more than dogma here. Again, we need to look at the political situations of Native peoples with a clear eye. Who among us would condemn James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner for choosing not to stay safely at home, but to work for civil rights well-knowing they might be assassinated by the KKK (which, of course, they were)? If we want to value the lives of Native children, I submit we must look at those lives in toto, not merely in regard to a specific medical decision. As I noted on SBM yesterday, the suicide rate among young Native Americans in the U. S. is more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times on some reservations.

Broad statistics lie, of course, so let me try to unpack that a bit. Tribal cultures in North America are quite diverse. Some tribes, the Navajo for example, have adapted well to living in communities surrounded by and interacting with white society. Other tribes have adapted not at all. When forced not to ‘be Indians’ their souls wither and they die. The suicides are just the tip of an iceberg of self-destruction. The 3X average is misleading, as some tribes would show no difference of even lower-than-average rates. Where I grew up (Minnesota) the Native population of plains Indians (mostly ‘Sioux’) were definitely in the 10X category.

I have no idea where the Six Nations and New Credit people fall on the adjustment-to-coexistence scale. If they’ve generally been adaptable, that matters in taking the Bigger Picture view of the case.

So, leaving those Nations out of it, I must note that the Native people who die when their cultures are forcibly denied them do not do so because they cling hard and firm to some superstition, dogma, ritual, etc. Throughout their history, they have actually been much more adaptable than most whites know. They reacted to white colonization by trying to go along to get along, and reconstructed their lives to adopt many of the white mans ways. But they had their limits, as you might expect, and however much they blended their culture with ours, it was never enough.
………………………
………………………

The following may have no relevance whatsoever to the case of the First Nations leukemia patients in specific, or the argument for First Nations rights in Canada in general. I offer it here because I feel an obligation to my forebears to explain ‘where I was coming from’ in comments I made yesterday, in part to admit that they may well have been off the mark in terms of the present discussion, for which I apologize.

(N.B. ‘Sioux’ is an umbrella term devised by whites to refer to three groups of plains tribes with similar physical features, and related languages and cultures. From East to West, these people referred to themselves as ‘Dakota’, ‘Nakota’, and ‘Lakota’. The differences were important to them, as were the differences between the different tribes in each group, but not to the European settlers. The three groups and their component tribes only began to form a united front against colonization in the mid 1860s, after the events described below.)

Yesterday, at SBM, I quoted the speech made by Taoyateduta (aka Little Crow) to the Dakota war council on the eve of the Dakota uprising of 1862. Taoyateduta was chief of the Mdewakanton tribe, but also the de facto leader of the Dakota in general, having gained more respect than the chiefs of the other tribes. Two young Mdewakanton braves had murdered a white family in an honor challenge, an act considered a grievous crime but in some way understandable within Dakota culture, but the worst sort of evil to whites. The Dakota knew retribution would be swift and severe, and militant chiefs had called for a ‘first-strike’ response that would drive the whites from the Dakota lands they had usurped through ‘The Trail of Broken Treaties.’

Taoyateduta, who has been East to visit President Buchanon in Washington, knew war was folly. He called for peace. He could not convince the other chiefs. There was going to be a war whether he liked it or not. To sum up the speech, he spoke eloquently about the impossibility of defeating the whites, and the madness of making such an attempt. And then he said he would die with his people. If he could not live as a Mdewakanton, what was the point?

The thing is, being a Mdewakanton was a lot more flexible for Taoyateduta than Liberty was for Patrick Henry. He made every attempt to synthesize Native and European cultures, generally favoring the latter. He lived in a wood frame house, wore European style clothes, joined an Episcopal church, and attempted to take up farming, as the U.S. government had dictated the Indians must.

Now, the Dakota were no more suited to farming than the German farmers settling in Minnesota were suited to hunting Buffalo, but they gave it a go anyway. They didn’t have a change, though. The Feds had crammed them in to a too-small strip of land running along the Minnesota River Northwest of New Ulm, MN. As part of the treaty establishing this territory, the Feds had agreed to provide supplemental food, blankets and other supplies knowing the Dakota wouldn’t be self-sustaining in the near future.

However, the government placed distribution of food and supplies in the hands of corrupt traders, who refused to pass them on to the Dakota and tried to sell them on the black market instead. (Yes, free enterprise is always the answer…) The trading posts were protected by Federal troops. With his people starving, Taoyateduta met with the BIA agent and a representative of the private traders to demand the food and supplies the Dakota had been promised. Trader’s rep Andrew Myrick replied, “So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.” The BIA agent stood by the traders. It was this that led the other chiefs to advocate for war in the wake of the settlers’ murders.

Andrew Myrick was one of the first casualties of the uprising. The Dakota stuffed grass in his mouth and left his body on display outside the warehouse where he had hoarded their food while their wives and children starved. The BIA agent who did more than anyone to precipitate the uprising by backing Myrick with Federal authority fled into obscurity, or at least absence from further historical records.

The war failed, as Taoyateduta knew it would. He attempted to lead attacks on military targets, but was repulsed by superior firepower. Angered warriors refused to accept his commands, split off and committed atrocities among the civilian population of New Ulm. The Dakota surrendered after five weeks of hostilities. 303 Dakota men were sentenced to death for atrocities by a military tribunal, with no legal representation and no understanding of the proceeding. The vast majority of them were innocent of the charges, having being loyalists who stayed with Taoyateduta fighting the military. Some had not participated in the fighting at all, and had risked their lives protecting white settlers from violence. Most of the renegades who had committed the atrocities had fled before the surrender, and escaped capture.

Resisting pressure from Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey, who demanded the execution of all 303, Abraham Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 38 — ostensibly restricting the executions to the truly guilty. However, the authorities hadn’t exactly been keeping track of who was who, and a number of innocent men were sent to the gallows in place of guilty warriors who had similar names. Among these was Chaska, who had made the most heroic efforts on behalf of the white settlers, and saved the most lives.

On December 26, 1862 the 38 were executed in a public hanging in Mankato MN.* It remains the largest mass execution in American history.

The remaining Dakota were deported to a reservation in Northeast Nebraska, again instructed to take up farming, but this time on sandy soil that yielded little and no real farmer would claim. Predictably, death continued to follow death. The NE land was dubbed The Santee Indian Reservation, ‘Santee” being the white name for the Mdewakanton. My paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Medora Santee. She never disclosed details of her youth to my father, and only many years after her death did I learn she had been born in Niobrara, NE, the town at the edge of the Santee reservation. Based on this, and a few other scant details from my Dad’s memory, we began to suspect she had been of mixed blood. Had this been true, she certainly would have hidden it as she married a German immigrant, and midwestern German-Americans could never forgive the Dakota for the New Ulm atrocities.

In the years that followed, I sometimes considered I might eventually be the last living descendant of one of the falsely convicted men who had their sentences commuted by Lincoln and got shipped off to Nebraska in chains. I never expected my ancestor to visit me in dreams, but I felt some kind of small historical debt.

I thought back to my undergrad days when I would sometimes commute to the U of M by bicycle, passing through the Native American neighborhood on Franklin Ave. Open and friendly during the day, it was filled with bars and became the most dangerous part of town at night. When I went with my friends to the punk clubs off Hennepin Ave. downtown, we’d run into older Native American men hanging out on streetcorners. They were friendly enough, too, but after a minute of conversation deep profound damage would bubble to the surface. I would feel like I was talking to one of the walking dead. At the time, I never imagined we might be tied by blood and forgotten history.

14 years later, the spotty revelations about my grandmother presented the possibility I might be descended in some sense from both sides of this awful war (though my German grandfather hadn’t arrived in America until the 1900s). I took an interest in the history of the uprising, and in Native Rights in general. At one point I applied for a teaching post where part of my duites would have been helping kids from the Rez in North Dakota get into college. I sure as hell didn’t want to live in Grand Forks, and that would been my reason for accepting it. I didn’t get the offer anyway.

Maybe 6 or 7 years ago, after my father’s death, I finally took to the Internet geneology resources to see if I could verify my grandmother’s heritage. I discovered she actually had no native heritage at all (again, this was just our suspicion, she’d never made any claim of the sort, only referring to herself as “descended from French Huguenots”).

It turned out she was actually mostly German herself, her father having been born in Pennsylvania Dutch country with the German surname Sante. When and how exactly it got changed to Santee I do not know, but my guess it was no accident he wound up in Niobrara, where he apparently became something of a big wheel before mysteriously committing suicide. For all I know he may have been using the coincidence of the naming to exploit the Mdewakanton for financial gain. We do know he learned to speak Dakota fluently. His wife was a Christian missionary who apparently worked on the Santee Rez. Maybe they were good people. I don’t know. I thought briefly about going to NE to see what might be in the county historical society archives. But it would be a difficult and expensive trip from where I’ve lived, and in the end, I guess I don’t want to know.

Anyway, none of this generalizes to all Native groups, and again the Six Nations and New Credit bands may have very different histories and situations. And, no, even if those bands have similar histories, that would not justify the parents withdrawing their children from chemo, or the Chiefs for supporting that decision, or the Brandt CAWS agency for washing its hands and refusing to act. It might explain those things to some small extent. Or not.

Some folks who comment here seem unable to distinguish explanation from justification. I can’t fathom that. If you’ve read this far, I just want you to know I can’t tell this story without crying: for Taoyateduta, for the victims in New Ulm, for Chaska, for the wounded men on Hennepin Ave., for the men drinking themselves to death in the Franklin Ave. bars, for the kids on the Red Lake rez even today who see no future worth living for, for America, for Makayla Sault, and for my inability to make any of this change.

I have read every history of the 1862 uprising still in print and available on Amazon. I know all the details, good and bad — mostly bad. Taoyateduta remains one of my ‘heroes’.

I wish no great harm to Daniel Synder, but I’d sure like to see someone stuff grass in his big mouth (alive, of course).

If I believed in spirits, I would pray for the spirit of Taoyateduta to rise in Florida and have a little pow-wow with Brian Clement. After which Clement would be displayed in front of the Hippocrates Health Institute, his mouth stuffed with wheatgrass enemas.

Free Leonard Peltier.

A revolting webpage of faith-healing Christian’s tryng to use the First Nations decision to justify returning an Arizona boy who was taken into custody by CPS for leukemia treatment to his Fundie Mom.

Whereas the alternative treatments, including prayer, were part of the Christian family’s faith and tradition, their heritage was not met with the same tolerance that Makayla’s family found. It is her very faith that the CPS-appointed psychiatrist called “delusional.” Though prayer and healing is an ancient part of Christian doctrine, Christopher’s removal from the mother he has grown up with was based on the accusation that Tonya “continues to cling steadfastly to her bizarre religious beliefs.” She is charged with neglect because she chose to seek alternatives, including prayer and healing, before agreeing to a procedure that her research said was risky and very painful.

Note the blatant lie that the First Nations case involved Makayla. Note also, damnit, that the First Nations decision has nothing to do with “tolerance toward family heritage.” It was decided on grounds of constitutional sovereignty.
………..
A voice of reason, this Canadian author of First Nations descent castigates the New Credits and Six Nations chiefs for siding with ‘Alternative’ quackery and faith-healing, and stands up for SBM, without tossing Aboriginal rights into the garbage. (Yes, it’s on HuffPo Canada, but I think the author’s independent and they pulled the story from somewhere else…)

From my point of view it would be gratifying to see the cause of indigenous rights asserted on something actually indigenous, rather than upon the creative practices of a Florida massage therapist or the proposal that Jesus cures. In some hospitals, an intergrationst approach has been taken, in which elders and cultural potocols have been brought into the institution. Belief in a culture doesn’t have to manifest itself in absolutist choices between supposed cultural purity and betrayal… The expressed long-term goal of many native communities is a community-developed and community-run child welfare agency that has local support and legitimacy. In my ideal world, this agency would already be in place, and it would be looking unromantically on the dubious claims of this aboriginal rights crusade.

E.g., the right thing to do, as doug has already noted #15, is let the shamans do their incantations and smoke-burning while the kid gets chemo.
……..
Finally, please, please watch this clip, the last 5 minutes of Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man with Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins:
http://youtu.be/QwgnDn8ez9g?t=59s
I don’t believe in magic, but if ever have to undergo chemo, I’d want that man in my room.

Orac, I think you should care about the back stories that influence parental decision making. It does matter. And if you take it into consideration, you can make it work for you to benefit the patient, rather than against you.

We aren’t going to make any headway against quacks as long as they appear to be the patient’s “friend” and we appear to be the enemy. They whisper to the patient, “we’re listening to you, we understand you, you can trust us.”

When all we have to offer is cold facts, is it any wonder the parents run rather than walk to these despicable people?

Advocacy needs to focus on the quacks, on the actual harm they cause.

Whereas the alternative treatments, including prayer, were part of the Christian family’s faith and tradition, their heritage was not met with the same tolerance that Makayla’s family found.

Which to my mind argues Makayla’s family’s heritage should have been met with less tolerance, not that the Christian family’s faith and tradition should have been viewed with more tolerance.

doug
CAWS is either the sound crows make, a misspelling of the word for female bovines, or what comes at the fingers of someone meaning to type FACS (Family and Child Services) when some neurons misfire.*

Had you perused my post and the actual decision more carefully, you’d see how the hospital failed in its pursuit of a protection order.** The petition takes the form of ‘J.J. must be taken into custody because X’, with X needing to be valid under the applicable law. In preparing their petition, the hospital failed to consider how the fact J.J. is a First Nations child would affect the judgement under law. Worse, they clearly failed in their intellectual responsibility as scientists by conceding that Clement’s treatments constituted “traditional medicine.”

At the point J.J.’s family fled the jurisdiction, the petition became an attempt not to ‘make law’ but to clarify existing law. That is, it was about the principle, not the kid, as the kid wasn’t anywhere Brant FACS could do anything about it.

As for an appeal, IANACL so I don’t know who else might have standing to make one, but the hospital surely does as they were the party that brought the action, and lost the decision. And, uh, the judge IS the government, and I don’t get the point about public funding of the hospital. If public funding makes them part of the government, then one arm of government would be challenging another arm of government. But i have no idea what kind of judicial system would let only the government challenge the government.

* There are so many different acronyms for child welfare agencies from state to state, maybe even county to county, I can’t remember which is which, or exactly what they all are. I don’t think any of them are CAWS, and my brain somehow inserted the ‘A” from FACS into CWS — Child Welfare Service.
** That would be my tit for your tat. Or, as we’re talkin’ Canada here, if you’re doug, i’m bob, and I just returned a “Hoser!” to my brother, eh?

@sadmar

How do you KNOW what they KNOW? Indeed sadmar, as Im sure you KNOW, whether anyone can actually ever be said to KNOW anything is *the* epistemological question. When you add people with some sort of ‘faith’ – whereby they allow themselves to ‘know’ things (I’ll stop the caps now..sure you get the point) without (indeed almost because) of the lack of rational scientific evidence, then who knows what they can be said to know or why?
However, we don’t need to get too philisophical. You believe that the parents are knowingly doing something that is probably not the best for their child. I believe that the parents may well be doing what they think is best for their child because they have reached the wrong conclusions. I believe this has been substantially aided by conmen doing what conmen always do – being the plausible, confident optimitstic people insinuating themselves into vulnerable peoples lives – and I suspect that once the politics of the tribes got involved and committed to the cause it became extremely difficult for the parents to ever change their minds.

I feel sorry for these people because they have an ill child, and even more sorry because they have made a bad choice for the wrong reasons, fallen in with conmen, and been trapped by a steamrolling political cause – and they will have to live with it.

btw I can’t belive that you are suggesting that they know this guy is a crook thrugh the internet! When I google him I get the first 5 results are his stuff, then some smiley pics of him (my god I trust him already – he looks soooo, trusty!) – then no 6 is RI, then the rest seems pretty upbeat about him.

A more likely hypothesis is that Ken Sault is prominent enough in the New Credit community that the authorities feared the consequences of intervening.

I’d have feared the consequences of not interfering–i.e., the avoidable deatrh of a minor child whose rights we were tasked with protecting–far more. But hey–I’m funny that way: I don’t believe people have the right to sacrifice the well-being of their children on the altar of their faith.

JGC – just to be clear the quote you took from my post above deals with parents deciding care for minor children. If you are an adult, though I will disagree with your decision quite strongly, you are free to shove wheatgrass enemas where the sun don’t shine all day long and I won’t stop you. But I vehemently reject woo for children who don’t have the capacity to make that decision for themselves.

Kiiri has elucidated my opinions about J.J.’s care and the poor decisions made by her parents to discontinue the treatment for her cancer.

J.J. has not reached the developmental stage where she is considered competent to stop the prescribed treatments. Her mother who is her natural guardian has chosen some alternative care in lieu of the treatments which have a documented record of 90 % cure rate.

The treating hospital is blameless because they notified the local social services unit about the situation and when that unit refused to intervene, the hospital brought the case into court.

The judge, according to the Ross Miles’ link, never questioned the mother about her folk remedies…in spite of the judge having a common heritage. Folk remedies/medicines/religious beliefs are accommodated by every hospital where I have worked and where family members were hospitalized.

The charlatan Clements is still in business in Florida. If Florida moved against him tomorrow, that will have no impact on the course of J.J.’s illness.

(I,m going back there) J.J.’s mother should have been removed as her child’s guardian, because she has gamed the system and is medically neglecting her child.

There.is.no.excuse.for.medically.neglecting.your.child.period.

@Sadmar
““How are the parents supposed to know that even though this guy is allowed to present himself as a bona fide doctor that he isn’t one?” The Internet maybe? “

The internet will tell them western medicine is evil, especially that Orac guy. It will tell them vaccines are a toxic soup designed to keep us dumb and sick, and probably infertile. It will tell them antibiotics are useless and actually cause disease. It will tell them less than 2% of cancer sufferers survive five years after chemo. It will tell them there are at least 10 secret cures to cancer – from a 9-volt battery, to herbal teas, to a caustic balm to baking soda and coffee consumed through the wrong orifice – with success rates between 95 and 100%.

The internet is an amazing tool, assuming you already have the critical thinking fundamentals and at least a little trust in science. But without those things, the internet is not a guaranteed path to knowledge, no matter how badly you may wish to find the truth. Surely the worldwide anti-vax movement is ample evidence of this.

@sadmar

way to go – also way to miss the point. You claimed they ‘know’ something as though this projection of what you know was automatic, in fact I don’t see it is – I also fail to see that checking his credentials on the internet actually gets you some form of definite knowledge – it gets you a bunch of opinions from two sides, since they can’t differentiate those worth listening to in their immediate vicinity I fail to see how looking on the internet will help them – perhaps you think they’ll come to RI read your posts and experience an exegisis ROFL!

My main point here is that whlst this is being characteriszed as ‘neglect’ I do not believe it is necessarily so – (and this does go to their ‘knowledge’). Neglect is taking no action when one should. These parents are taking action – presumably the action that they think is best – IT IS THE WRONG ACTION but it is not negelect. They have failed to realize that in the USA at least having a shiny building out there in public marked ‘Cancer Center’ with doctory people in it, adverts, presentations and all that stuff, isn’t sufficient to differentiate hospitals from quacks. Is there any other area where conmen are allowed to set up and practise in such a blatant manner?

Sadmar – just because you, I and everyone else on this blog perceive our ‘knowledge’ as obvious doesn’t make it a priori or indeed the only possible conclusion. You have to factor in also the lens of subjective perception also. To try to understand the steps that allow them to reach these bad decisions rather than just assuming that they are idiots is I believe more constructive in the long run.

Perfectly rational people are subjected to all sorts of cons all the time, and whole nations of apparently rational people have marched to war based on lies and sociological pressure – but you don’t believe it is possible for one average and vulnerable, probably frightened set of parents to be misinformed (deliberately) and caught up in pressures (such as becoming a legal cause celebre), and reach the wrong conclusions?

Given all the sociological tripe you spout I would have thought you at least might have understood this point, but clearly you’re the kind of person who reads (and quotes) lots of books, but understands few of the words therein.

@29 I did read the judgement carefully. It is a sloppy piece of work when it comes to presentation of the information.

My interpretation of the judgement is that it would not have made any difference if the hospital had undertaken to prove the quack is quack and his offerings largely useless, and/or that they have nothing to do with the traditional medicine of the tribe to which the family belonged. Similarly for the traditional medicines. The claim was made that the girl would receive traditional medicine, and it appears that that claim alone was taken by the judge as sufficient to warrant his ruling. There is nothing in the judgement precluding use, concurrent or otherwise, of any other therapy – nor could there be unless it were highly specific.
It is clear that all parties were aware that chemotherapy offered a high chance of survival and that no other treatment of any sort was likely to prevent the death of the child. A claim was made very early in the process that the gild would receive traditional medicine. The judge effectively ruled that the right of the parents to choose traditional medicine, because the use thereof was an defining feature of the culture, trumped everything else, even if it would clearly end in the death of the child. I can see nothing to suggest he failed to understand that the traditional medicine would be ineffective.

It might have been best if the hospital had withdrawn the application the moment the girl was taken out of the country, but I don’t know what the implications of that would be. It might bar a renewed attempt to have her apprehended if she returned to Canada while still in need of treatment. It might have put an immediate end to the case without judgement, thereby preventing the judge from making his ruling and so leaving the opportunity for a protracted trial without regard to the case of a specific individual or the encumbrance of the ruling as it now stands.

While the hospital probably could launch an appeal, that just is not its job. It is allocated public funds to provide health care under the existing laws, not to spend vast amounts of money and resources in the courts. Any appeal, I believe, is properly the responsibility of the the governments of Ontario and/or Canada, specifically because there are constitutional matters to be considered and it concerns all aboriginal people throughout the country, not just one person and her family.

Had our children been forced into treatment, it would have I have to wonder what Justice Edward’s position on female genital mutilation (euphemistically referred to as ‘female circumcision) would be–the practice is just as much a cultural practice integral to many cultre’s traditions. Would he hold that preventing parents from handing their daughters over to the local barber for infundibulation would similarly have “a disastrous effect on their emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being”, prevenitng theim for beign proud of their own traditions and possibly learning that this teaching of their cultures was wrong and even dangerous?

Somehow I doubt it., which makes me wonder how he distinguishes between cultural traditions that are contrary to the well-being of minor children we must respect and which we can condemn..

The horrible thing about the judge’s ruling is that it would seem to amount to a blanket barrier to any outside agency intervening in any health or well-being matter for any aboriginal child, as long as the parents assert that they will use traditional medicine. But I can see potential for great difficulty in overturning or modifying his ruling, which is why I believe that any appeal should be undertaken with great care and originate with an agency with substantial resources and a negotiating position that is very solid – most certainly not a hospital.

Fortunately, I don’t think many aboriginal people in Canada reject modern medical care in general. Probably the number that lack good local access to it is vastly greater than the number that would reject it. I fear that this ruling might be used to interfere with protection of kids for whom Big Alcohol has played a big part in the inability of their parents to care for them.

Thank you lilady. I disagree with both JGC and JCL (and one of you needs a new handle because I am mixing you up) about the definition of neglect. If you refuse care for your child that is by definition medical neglect. When you make a point about depression (JGC I hope) and what is essentially spiritual practice, hell practice whatever spirituality you want. As I pointed out, you can burn incense, wave feathers, stand on your head, chant to the Buddha, or whatever else strikes you fancy while your child is receiving their chemo. Hell you can feed her wheatgrass smoothies and vegan food all you want while she gets her chemo. You are basically arguing semantics. That case at hand is that with chemotherapy this girl has a 90% chance at survival. The data shows NO OTHER THERAPY that is effective. None. Zip. Nada. So we are not arguing which drugs to use, we are arguing science versus magical thinking. Think all the magic you want, but if you believe that children should under any circumstances be removed from their parents then medical neglect counts. If you starve your child they will get taken away. But if you decide you’d rather give your child juice rather than chemo then suddenly you have the right to do that. It is beyond hypocritical. In either case the child is doomed. I don’t support taking children from parents lightly but in this instance a medical guardian should have been appointed to make decisions in the best interest of the child. Period. Not all cases are so clear cut. I admit that, the real world is often rather messy. In this case the facts are quite clear. In other cases more nuance may be needed to figure it out that is what we have a court system for. I don’t advocate for denial of due process, but in this instance a terrible decision was made that essentially sacrifices this girl on an altar of ideals. As for JCL (I think) and FGM I don’t care what your culture is carving up your child’s sex organs is abuse. The child cannot consent, is harmed in the process, and culture be damned in that case. I also don’t necessarily support automatic gender assignment surgery for children born intersex as research is showing that its basically a dice roll whether the child will grow up happy with their assignment. Again, when you are talking about something that can’t be reversed and you are doing it to a child then you need some pretty compelling reason and just because we’ve always done it that way don’t cut the mustard.

@Kiiri et la
I seem to be getting a bit vilified for things I havn’t said or implied. Let me be plain – I think in this case these children should certainly be required to have the proper SB treatment. I in no way condone ‘magical’ practises especially for such serious illnesses. I absolutely in no way condone genital mutilation, foot binding or any other parctise that harms children whatever its cultural provenance.

But anyway, it isn’t ‘tradition’ medicine that is at question here – it is pseudo-science quackery, and that can be harder for none science based people to penetrate.

Look we allow this guy Clements to set up a clinic right there in the main street, spout pseudosciency stuff to people who may not be able to differentiate, advertise, get testimonials, fake up studies etc etc. Then he turns up and says to the parents the one thing that real doctors can never say in this situation, the one thing the parents really want to hear, which is ‘ don’t worry, it’ll be all right’.
So at this point, from the parents point of view, this isn’t a case of a real treatjment against no treatment, this is a case of one treatment against another. That is not neglect – by definition – it is being wrong.
So now we have let this conman do all his stuff, operate publically, turn up and speak reassuring crap to parents, and then for some reason we blame the parents for being conned!
Sorry, but my view here is that the parents are largely a victim of a conman – without whose existence, apparently happily allowed by the state, they simply wouldn’t have had the option of choosing such a bad course.

I blame the conman, I blame the system that allows the conman. To what extent I believe the parents are actually culpable here is in my mind open to question, and it doesn’t seem to me that this is ‘neglect’ in the way I understand the word (ie conscious non-action that harms a child) – they are taking action, and I think they believe it is efficous action, therefore it’s not neglect, and I’m not going to disregard logical objective analysis of the situation just to dance to the same tune as everyone else.

JCL, stop changing the subject, by bringing Wakefield up.

There are many cases of medical neglect, where the local social services agency and/or a judge has utterly failed to protect a child whose medical needs are neglected by a parent. J.J.’s serious illness and her mother’s medical neglect is just the latest case.

Just look at your post at # 36 above, as you argue about intervening without the facts presented by the treating physicians and by Orac. The child has a 90 % chance of total cure with prescribed treatment and a 100 % chance of dying without the prescribed treatment.

You’d do well to check out some facts about childhood leukemia treatments, remission and cure rates, before you defend the neglectful mother and Judge Edward.

The clincher surely is they were doing the right thing – getting chemo – until this guy turned up and convinced them he had another way – he is the sine qua non of the situation – he is the criminal, not his victims

What have counterfactuals to do with this? She didn’t opt for treatment from a naturopath, homeopath or chiropractor she opted for chemotherapy. If she had ‘spontaneously’ opted for these kinbd of treatment I would join the bandwagon no problem.

But then Clements turned up and convinced her otherwise – presumably by telling her that he had 100% success rate (better than 90%) and much easier than chemo.
Would you select 100% success rate over 90% – I would. And if I opted for the 90% treatment instead of the 100% then I would be neglectful. The problem is in this case the 100% treatment doesn’t exist – its a phoney, con, sham whatever – but how is she to actually know this? Just because you (and sadmar) *know* this doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone else.
Conmen work by being plausible – they have actually fairly low success rate, so they cast a wide net on likely grups til they hook a sucker. Its not nice being a sucker, but it doesn’t make you the criminal.

Look, I agree we all have responsibilites to our children, and must do what is best for them, and that includes some due diligence etc – and no doubt it seems this mother was rather quick to jump ship, but I really don’t see how we can allow these kind of people to operate – indistinguishable as they may well be from ‘real’ doctors, and then blame people when they are taken in.
I do blame Clement for this situation – very clearly I blame him – without him and his actions there would be no situation, the child would be getting the chemo and possibly we would have happy ending.

Stop absolving him and treating him like he’s secondary. Not everyone knows as much about medicine as you do – these bastards cast a wide net until they hit the right kind of mark, at the right time, in the right way and make a score – and they do that not by convincing people that they have *alternative* therapies they do it by convincing them that they have *an alternative* therapy – there is a difference – just like two real doctors sometimes prescribe different treatments – as soon as these people feel he is a ‘real’ doctor (and why wouldn’t they?) then the course of action he suggests becomes just another reasonable possiblity to them. Thats why I see them as victims not neglectful – but I sense that basically as far as your concerned a wrong choice equals neglect.

Well, the parents aren’t completely absolved in my view, but I really do find it strange that you just seem to pass over Clements very active role in this in favour of panning the parents.

I don’t address these issues because I agree in toto with all that has been said about them on this blog – I have said this a number of times. I agree the child should have the chemo, I agree the state should intervene if the mother refuses it – I have not said anything different.

The only thing I disagree with is the characterization of the mother as ‘medically negligent’. Perhaps ‘medically incompetent’ or some other phrase should be used here. Perhaps you can give me your definition of ‘negligent’ because mine requires *willfully* avoiding action, whereas
it is my belief that it is at least possible that this mother was in fact taking the action she thought was best, and that is not negligence, however wrong it is.

You seem to feel that by saying that I am somehow siding with the mother or something, I am not. There is however a difference between someone who causes harm to their child because they wilfully and knowingly do the wrong thing (or do nothing) and someone who causes harm inadvertently believing that what they are doing is the best thing. This is a bigger and more general problem with ‘woo’ which I am trying to discuss – namely that many of the people inflicting these things on there children seem to geneuinely believe they are doing the right thing. I want to know how they get to a point that seems to me (us!) so clearly wrong, because then we might have some chance of preventing it, and in this case it certainly seems fairly clear that the mother got there because of the direct intervention of a conman.
That I believe is perhaps the situation here. It doesn’t alter the fact that the state should take remedial action to ensure the childs health and saftey to the best possible SB technique we have – but it does highlight that perhaps it would be better if the state took preventative action to not allow conmen anywhere near vulnerable parents of sick children.
I don’t really know why you are objecting to that statement, or my focus on the person without whom none of this would ever have happened.

“The State has the right, indeed the duty, to intervene and remove the medical guardianship from a parent who medically neglects her child.”

Yes, in general, but First Nations people are only subjects of the Canadian State in some senses, while in others they are subjects of their aboriginal nation, as a matter of Canadian law. There is a very complex social/legal problem at work here. The ‘state’ that has the right and duty to intervene in custody is the Six Nations band, but they do not have an apparatus to do so because Canada has allowed them to establish one. Furthermore the FACS does not have an option to impose ‘medical guardianship’ as no such thing exists under the law. They can put a child into protective custody, but that severs the parents’ guardianship completely.

As will eventually post in more detail, McMaster Hospital does bear great blame here. Canada does have a govermental body that can mandate treatment plans for a patient incapable of making their own decisions (e.g. an immature 11-year old with leukemia). It’s called the CCB. It was McMaster’s choice to seek FACS to take guardianship away from the parents completely, instead of seeking a treatment mandate from the CCB.

Application of de jure law is always constrained by defacto situations on the ground. Once Clement got his hooks into J.J.’s parents there was nothing anyone could do to actually force them into putting her back into chemo.

By law, an FACS agency has to do an investigation before putting a child in protective custody. They can’t just go grab the kid upon receipt of a notice of possible neglect, which is all a physician can provide. There’s no mechanism for custody that doesn’t put the parents on alert, and if they have the means and desire to flee the jurisdiction, game over.

‘Should’ and $2 Canadian gets you a cup of coffee at Tim Horton’s.

Perhaps you can give me your definition of ‘negligent’ because mine requires *willfully* avoiding action, whereas
it is my belief that it is at least possible that this mother was in fact taking the action she thought was best, and that is not negligence, however wrong it is.

Ergo, opting for prayer over medical treatment isn’t negligent.
So long as it’s what the parents think is best.

JCL: I apologize that you think in some way you are being picked on, that was not my intent. I agree something should be done about the quacks. However, with disturbing and distressing frequency more and more states are opting to give pretty much everyone who shows up carte blanche to open a pseudoscience ‘clinic’. There is the abysmal regulation of ‘supplements’ which only require the oft lamented on this and other skeptical websites quack Miranda warning. Plus you have naturopaths, chiropracters, acupuncturists, and others who are gaining state credentials and opening up shops. We totally agree that it is wrong and should stop. Unfortunately these groups are well funded and well organized. And politicians are cowards. They don’t want the controversy so they rubberstamp a bill to give them a license and send them on their merry way to fleece the public. We have railed against it, written our congress critters about it, blogged about it, educated our friends about it. I believe almost every regular commenter on these pages has done one or in most cases all of these things. But we are few, with few resources. And we face the mighty tides of government apathy or outright powerlessness (for example read the many tales of the Texas Medical Board vs. Burzynski). Clement is a charlatan and a crank. However it is doubtful that anyone in any position of authority in FL is going to shut him down. And even if they did I would bet you dollars to donuts he would have a new shop set up in 5 minutes flat. Probably in TX which has become Mecca for quacks the world over. We can do our best but we can’t stop them without some kind of political will and at this point it seems sorely lacking.
I take some issue with your seeming support of the mother in this case. Yes, she has been conned. But here is the thing she let herself be conned. She went for the easy way out. You don’t have to get very far in this life to begin to understand that when something is presented to be too good to be true that it is. I don’t envy her situation it is truly horrible to have a child diagnosed with cancer. Even more horrible to know that they will suffer (for two years) through treatment that grown adults shouldn’t have to suffer through. But at that point you have to be the adult you have to step up. You have to hold their hand, and reassure them, and be the parent. Because in the end your child will suffer and you will wish with all your soul to take that suffering into your own body and spare them the pain. But in the end you will have a great likelihood of holding your child in your arms. Your only other option is to be mourning at their grave. To me that’s not an option. In this case when the parents were duped by a conman and wanted the easy way out the courts had the opportunity to do their duty and save this child’s life and they failed spectacularly to do so. The only person who is going to suffer from this is a young girl who is too young to know better and too young to make her own decisions. And that is what makes me cry. The parents are misguided and deluded and they act out of love but that doesn’t excuse it. It doesn’t excuse the religious who don’t believe in medicine only prayer, and it doesn’t excuse those who want pseudoscience over medicine.

@Narad
I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent. Wrong, misguided and so on yes, but negligent, no. I do not believe in any religion, but apparently some people do and very strongly at that. So if these people are acting in a genuine belief that what they are doing is best I don’t think they can be called negligent – dangerous, ignorant lunatics yes – negligent no. To my mind negligence is failure to act when it is indicated – and failure to act according to what you think is best – the most any of us can really be required to do. If someone acts in a medical situation by consulting a priest not a doctor because they think that is the best course, I abhor their action, but I do recognise it as an action with the right motivation.

Take the MMR thing again. Some people did not give their kids the jabs because they genuinely believed that there was an issue. They did not take the best action-with some tragic consequences – but they did take the best action as far as their information and perception of the situation and so on went – were they negligent, or just badly misguided?

What if the dodgy decision has been strongly affected by some baleful deliberately acting to confuse and mislead these people – is this still negligence?

This is really a matter of semantics – perhaps this whole ‘negligent’ thing is actually a red herring, though there does seem to be some sort of psychological thing going on here, where the mother absolutely must be labelled negligent, despite the clear mitigation of being conned – I donno why, maybe its just easier to see things in clear cut black and white or something.
Anyway it actually matters little what their motivations etc are for immediate practical purposes – if they are taking the wrong course of action in such a case then there should be intervention.
I’m not really interested in what we call the mother in this case – I am interested in how we characterise her actions though, and I personally think the active and critically important intervention of an extremely practised conman at the very least mitigates her negligence.

In for a penny…. This is U.S.-centric, but JCL’s comments seem to lie in the realm of the abstract.

It should be noted that child neglect is a matter of state law. I just took a quick look at Connecticut’s summary page, and it makes clear that intentionality is irrelevant.

That takes care of that one. Shall I proceed to the analysis of whether religious withholding of care is comparable to choosing a quack shack?

“I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent. Wrong, misguided and so on yes, but negligent, no. I do not believe in any religion, but apparently some people do and very strongly at that. So if these people are acting in a genuine belief that what they are doing is best I don’t think they can be called negligent – dangerous, ignorant lunatics yes – negligent no. To my mind negligence is failure to act when it is indicated – and failure to act according to what you think is best – the most any of us can really be required to do. If someone acts in a medical situation by consulting a priest not a doctor because they think that is the best course, I abhor their action, but I do recognise it as an action with the right motivation.”

You’re dead wrong JCL. Parents who medically neglect their children have been charged and convicted for their medical neglect:

http://whatstheharm.net/children.html

You do realize, don’t you, that J.J.’s mother agreed to the treatment, which apparently did not conflict with her aborigine beliefs, practices or aborigine “medicine”.

What type of aborigine “medicine” is used within that group? According to the Judge’s decision, aborigine “medicine” was not part of the court record. In fact, the only mention of religion was some sort of folk lore about a sky woman…quite typical of the folk lore one hears about from other indigenous groups to explain natural phenomena.

J.J. was on her tenth day of the prescribed chemotherapeutic treatments, when her mother telephoned Mr. Clement, because she “heard” about the therapy (raw vegan diet), he prescribes for his spa customers in Florida. Two days later the mother withdrew her consent and J.J.’s prescribed chemotherapeutic therapy regimen was halted.

Newly elected Chief Ava Hill and the Six Nations Elected Council are elated because they stuck it to The Man by sacrificing Makayla and J.J.:

https://www.facebook.com/Six.Nations.Elected.Council/photos/a.282105425149108.92021.270153759677608/1029194390440204/?type=1&theater

@lillady
I am not in anyway saying that in all cases, or even in this case, people are not charged or shouldn’t be charged with medical neglect. Where did I say that? If people are neglecting their children in any sense then damn right they should get done and the state should intervene.
But you are helping me clarify a little here. We all agree that the *intention* of the parents should not be part of the decision in respect to whether the state takes action, forces treatment etc.
What we do disagree with is culpability of people. I don’t believe necessarily that this person, or other faith types, or even some more general woo types are in fact negligent in the standard sense of the word – or sall we just say not culpable- depending on many factors such as their beliefs (meant in a general sense).

Some of the people who need intervention have the right intentions but undertake the wrong actions. Some may have gone too far in their religiousness, some may just be intellectually challenged or have other issues, some may have been deliberately mislead. What they need isn’t being labelled ‘negligent’ and criminalized – what they need is to agree action to learn/change, probably supervision.

So in a nutshell:
As far as ‘medically negligent’ in a civil sense, meaning requiring state intervention and so on. I agree
As far as ‘medically negligent’ in a criminal sense, meaning culpable, in this case I disagree.
We should intervn and force the treatment. We should attempt to help her understand why her kid is being given this treatment, and what a narrow escape she has had – but as long as the kid has the treatments I actually see no reason-in this specific case, I’m not making general rules here, for pursuing further actions against her (unless there is more to the story).

The involvment of the tribe and making this some kind of test case I view as being very pernicious, especially as it is not a traditional method. I totally agree that this aspect seems very screwed up. It seems that somewhere an opportunity was definiely missed on that basis. And to my mind strikes me as pure politics somewhere. I wonder for instance if Clements helped them to this lidea. I wonder indeed how he ever came to be there, I doubt he chooses his speaking engagements on a random basis. But why do you not see this as further mitgation for the mother? Did she stir up he chiefs? Or did they decide themselves to make this unfortunate person their political tool – and seriously – where was Clements in this process?

@Narad

second last paragraph of my #69

What constitutes a paragraph is unclear in that comment. Let’s go with what appears to be the ultimate one:

This is really a matter of semantics – perhaps this whole ‘negligent’ thing is actually a red herring

Then why on G-d’s green earth have you been nattering on about it?

I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent.

Which is to say that there is nothing to “construe,” the word has no meaning.

@Narad
How so? The question in the title was Who’s to blame?

No-one seems to disagree that the state should have intervened, that the tribal politics bit seems a bit screwed, that there have been failures in many places. I would say I was giving the thread relevant body.

btw I must also humble myself by admitting that I have been wrong about the exact meaning of ‘negligent’. I see now that it probably doesn’t generally imply the intentionality that I’m giving it. I suppose it doesn’t help trying to get my point across – sorry..
However, my point isn’t actually about the meaning of words its about the attribution of blame in this case. I see this child and her mother, at least to some degree, as victims.
I see her failure as the failure to be properly equipped intellectually to deal with making a critical decision about her sons life made more difficult by the fact the the whole situation, starting with their being any decision to make at all, and progressing through lies and deliberatel false statements actually designed to decieve her. And decieved she has been.
Now I don’t know every full detail here of the whole process of course, but in so far as the scenario is like I have describbed, I hold the mother blameless.

@Narad #77

Fair enough on the formatting. You took the last pararaph, but completey failed to look at the section:

‘Anyway it actually matters little what their motivations etc are for immediate practical purposes – if they are taking the wrong course of action in such a case then there should be intervention.’
which is clearly of direct relevance to your #71

And
‘Which is to say that there is nothing to “construe,” the word has no meaning.”
Huh? Which word? Yes, grammatically correct would have been ‘construe their actions’ rather than ‘construe them’.

Nitpicking grammer,sematic quibbling,sophistry and paragraph formatting! You certainly are a formidable force to oppose.

@sadmar

Thanks for the information.I hadn’t researched the tribe matter (wasn’t that relevant to the point I was trying to make), and it seems to have a different complexion than I thought, fair enough. It did seem to me likely that Clement didn’t just arrive there by accident – so really the mother was
compassed by an evil scheme that she had no knowledge of before she ever heard of him.

I personally think here is a valid question here and it doesn’t make me a monster for asking it. It seems pretty relevant to the OP question and the whole disucsison viz a viz woo and mothers who practise it on their children, namely (for about the 8th time):

If a person is deliberately targeted by someone intending to deceive them, and they are deceived, to what extent are they to blame for the consequences of that deception?

I can see there can be different view points – I was hoping to elucidate some of them, turned out to be hard work! Lilday and Narad seem to think that its simply caveat emptor and have no problem allowing these con artists to operate and target vulnerbale people – its simply your fault if your conned. I was genunely surprised to find this reaction on this blog.

Re the phrase ‘“properly equipped intellectually” I was trying
to express that her whole mental aparatus, her logic, knowledge, understanding of science, presence of mind, crticial thinking etc, cultural context, whatever aspects are required, has suffered a failure of some sort to allow her to be conned in this manner. It wasn’t meant to be demeaning per se – but unfortunately in cases of being caught up in cons there usually is some failure – even just the failure to ‘see the obvious that everyone else sees’. In this specific I off course don’t actually know what the factors were. Its not meant to be demeaning per se, but I was struggling to find yet another way to express the same thing. However, the fact is being caught in a con can leave a person feeling pretty stupid and humiliated when it is revealed to them, and in some respects it is a demeaning thing in and of iself. However, that in no way makes it the victims fault.
And yes I have agreed that ‘negligence’ in the sense used by lilday is right, and tried to focus on the question of actual malice. ie I agree that intentions have nothing to do with negligence – always did as far as taking civil action was concerned, but the point here is not about what word should be used (though I agree it would help if I was able to say what I meant with more precision), but to what extent the deliberate actions of the conman modifies the mothers ‘blame’ – especially, most especially in this case that without Clement intervention, the whole thing would never have happened. Thats pretty good reason for saying ‘Clement caused this situation’.

To what extent the mother is can actually be said to be fault here I don’t know. I think it would need detailed investigation and a judge to eventually determin that. Basically the list of ‘blame’ you wrote on the next thread seemed about right to me.

JCL: Your initial premise that it’s hard for people to know who’s a real doctor kind of moots the necessity of a quack to have a real MD as a front. Everything about Clement is deception. Naturopaths refer to themselves as NDs. Clement claims to be an NMD. Now, putting that M in there is clearlt meant to muddy the waters, which is why actual naturopaths don’t do it. They want to be accepted a legit on their own terms. But then Clement isn’t even a real naturopath. He bought his ‘NMD degree’ from a diploma mill. So from the parents’ points of view it could still be a ‘‘differing opinion between doctors’.

But the parents’ choices are still a bit weird, though we don’t have enough details to explain them. If we propose that as First Nations folks, they have a distrust of white medical insiitutions, why would they embrace a white guy from Florida uncritically even if they can’t tell a fake doctor from a real one. You’d think they’d be suspicious of any paleface promises. (?) But then, this all started with the Sault family, whose identity may be more defined by Evangelical Christianity than by aboriginal heritage. So they could have been seduced more by an appeal to faith, belief in God’s miracles.

Unlike J.J., who is reportedly immature, tentative, and defers to her mother whenever asked a question, Makayla Sault evidences her own will, and speaks firmly for herself. What also appears under-reported as the case has gone forward is that Makayla was having severe side effects from the chemo that had put her into the intensive care unit. She felt the chemo would kill her before the leukemia would. So she made pleas to God. Sonya Sault said “I remember I would just watch her, and listening to her pray, ‘Oh, God. Come and get me, come and take me from here’.” Then Makayla reported a vision of a long-haired man appeared in her hospital room:

I asked him, ‘Can you heal me,’ and he said, ‘You are already healed,’ and he held out his hands to me and I saw the holes in his hands and I knew that it was Jesus. And he told me, ‘Do not be afraid.’ So if I live or if I die, I am not afraid. God the creator has the final say over my life.”

By all reports, the chemo withdrawal was Makayla’s idea. She asked her parents to take her out of the hospital. She’d been in intensive care. She said she saw Jesus. What would anyone expect Evangelical parents to do?

Sonya Sault told reporters what the McMaster Dr.s had said about taking Makayla off chemo. They’d cited a 75% survival rate for Makayla’s condition, Her doctors told her family that she would have a 75 per cent chance of survival, and, “They basically said she would have 100 per cent relapse and she would die if we discontinued chemotherapy. And that going the route of traditional medicine has zero per cent success rate.” Which is why I said earlier they knew the choice could be fatal.

So my guess is it went something like this: the Dr.s hadn’t warned the Saults about the level of side effects Makayla experienced. When she went into intensive care, they bagan to question the Docs. The kid said she believed she was dying from the treatment, had prayed to God, and Jesus had appeared in answer to her prayers. So the devout parents aren’t just looking for a miracle, they’re expecting a miracle.

So they say they’re going with traditional medicine because they have to say something. But the ‘traditional healers’ in the community are probably well known to them, and if they thought those healers were All That, they probably wouldn’t have had Makayla in McMasters to begin with. Besides, as Christians, why would they have faith in ‘healing’ concepts based in pre-contact aboriginal theology? So I think it’s just an excuse to justify meeting Makayla’s request to get out of chemo, and wait for a miracle.

Enter Brain Clement. He appears out of nowhere, promising 100% cure with no side-effects whatsoever in as polished a presentation as a veteran con man can. He shows slides of HHI in West Palm. It doesn’t look like a hospital. It looks better than a hospital. Maybe that looks to the Saults as the sign from God they’ve been expecting. Maybe Evangelicals don’t double-check signs from God.

J.J.’s case seems to have a different dynamic entirely. The National Post had called McMaster’s decision to refer Makayla to Brant FACS into question and argued the case should have gone to the CCB two days after FACS closed its investigation of Makayla and announced it wouldn’t seek custody. So the whole CCB vs. FACS issue was in the public discussion well before McMaster referred J.J. to FACS, making that choice seem all the more bizarre,

We know a lot about the Saults from press reports. We know little or nothing about J.J. and her family. Those details could move any sort of evaluation of her case quite a bit, one way or another. E.g. was the chemo making her as sick as it had Makayla? What are these parents beliefs?

I have the feeling we’re nowhere near the heart of the onion.

‘Which is to say that there is nothing to “construe,” the word has no meaning.”
Huh? Which word? Yes, grammatically correct would have been ‘construe their actions’ rather than ‘construe them’.

Negligent. If you are going to say that “I think that if someone believes truly that what they are doing is the best for their child, then it is in fact hard to construe them as negligent” (while, as far as I can tell, arbitrarily excluding doing nothing regardless of belief), then you have stripped the word of meaning.

Nitpicking grammer,sematic quibbling,sophistry and paragraph formatting! You certainly are a formidable force to oppose.

I am not the one who elected to personally redefine a legal term. That is not semantic “quibbling” or “sophistry.” You would have done better to have simply stuck to this from the outset:

I see her failure as the failure to be properly equipped intellectually to deal with making a critical decision about her sons life made more difficult by the fact the the whole situation, starting with their being any decision to make at all, and progressing through lies and deliberatel false statements actually designed to decieve her. And decieved she has been.
Now I don’t know every full detail here of the whole process of course, but in so far as the scenario is like I have describbed, I hold the mother blameless.

This would have made clear that the position you were advancing – in the context of a court decision – had no bearing on the law.

^ Although it should be noted that what you’ve mostly been talking about is neglect, which related to – but not the same as – negligence. The latter is a cause of action after an injury; the former is a basis for state action to prevent injury (as well as to prevent further injury, but that’s not what this case is really about).

I’m trying to read this discussion with JCL and though I can see the mother was neglecting what was best for her child, I still fail to see much difference with a parent that falls for mr. Burzynski’s scheme. In both cases there is a so-called doctor, pretending to be able to cure a disease, and in both cases there is a parent seeing a child suffer and wanting the best treatment. The only difference is that in this case, there is a treatment that has been proven to work and with mr. Burzynski, there isn’t.

Sorry for the double post…I must have hit the “Submit Comment” button too soon.

Renate, there seems to be a vast difference between J.J.’s case where the physicians at the McMaster Children’s Hospital, who are well-trained pediatric oncologists/hematologists who were able to provide J.J.’s mother with the provable data that the particular type and staging of J.J.’s A.L.L, responds to chemotherapeutic drugs….as opposed to Burzynski’s free-standing clinic without hospital affiliations, without any qualified physicians who are trained in pediatrics, pediatric oncology/hematology and the especially false hope they raised for pediatric and adult patients who have intractable-to-treatment cancers.

Burzynski is a licensed medical doctor, as are his son and the other doctors who work for that clinic. Mr. Clement possesses at N.D. certificate from a diploma mill, whose only “consulation” appears to be a short telephone conversation with J.J.’s mother….yet Judge Edward labeled the vegan diet and some positive thinking mumbo jumbo as evidence that J.J.’s mother is following tribal religious practices.

J.J. and her parents were offered every conceivable service which we have come to expect from a terciary care children’s hospital, close to home…as opposed to the downright shoddy care offered at Burzynski’s clinic, where the recourse is to haul the patient in a taxicab to a hospital for admission to try and revert the dangerous hypernatramia, caused by the anteneoplastins which Burzynski prescibes to his patients and other chemotherapy drugs which have no proven record of putting patients in remission…or curing those patients. He also only makes those other drugs available through the pharmacy he owns….jacking up their costs to further fleece patients.

Clearly J.J. has been victimized by her parents’ medical neglect. If those parents don’t bring the child into McMaster (or another hospital) to continue her treatment, she is going to die as a result of that medical neglect.

JCL: The subject of “medical neglect” was brought up at the top of the thread and you had ample opportunity to find out for yourself what constitutes “medical neglect”…and you didn’t.

When Narad and I linked you to the legal definition of “medical neglect”, you apparently do not think that applies in the case at hand. You’ve come up with a new definition (medical incompetence), to explain the parents action for denying their child a 90% chance of survival.

Nothing that I have stated and nothing that Narad has stated are ad hominem attacks directed at you. When you come up with a cogent argument that mitigates the parents’ medical neglect, feel free to state it.

The conman is not a doctor and under the law does not have the duty to provide care (or agree to the provision of care), that J.J.’s parents have. That, after all, is the crux of the matter.

You raise extraneous issues about the conman and other conman (Andrew Wakefield), and have redefined “medical neglect” as “medical ignorance”, in a feeble attempt to defend the parents’ medical neglect of their child.

@lilady

Of FFS.
“That, after all, is the crux of the matter.” Its the crux of the matter that you want to talk about – and it seems that you want to constrain anyone else from talking about anything else – its not the crux of the perfectly relevant question that I am trying to discuss. Do you set the agenda round here? If you think its OT or something (its not as faras I can see) why keep replying?

“have redefined “medical neglect” as “medical ignorance””
Have done no such thing – did you even read my last post? At the point of saying that I was mistaken in my belief of what ‘medical neglect’ meant and was seeking for a phrase that implied the lack of care without necessarily intention to have lack of care. I have been corrected by yourself and Narad, I have moved on – can’t you?

“in a feeble attempt to defend the parents’ medical neglect of their child.” Defend? No – I don’t defend any kind of neglect.

Understanding how the neglect has arisen, what steps led these people to make these horrendous decisions for their children, that is what I am after doing. I am interested in this sort of thing never arising again – I am beginnning to feel that you are quite happy for it to continue to happen as long as you get to be first in the queue for crucifying the parents

I am not that interested in ‘legal duty of care’. Of course the parents have such a duty. The parents were failing in that duty. The state should have intervened to ensure the safety of tha child.
What interest me here is that JJs parents seem to have failed in their duty, in some part due to the intervention of a deliberately lying conman.

He is not extraneous – he is in my view central – you may differ from that view (for some reasons that you choose to keep hidden), but I really, really don’t see how holding that view is a matter for vilification – and frankly
except for Sadmar, who does seem to understand what I am talking about – I see no rational engagment from you or anyone else with the question at all.

@ pat: It’s all PC hooey, when parents from a minority group uses past grievances as a shield, to deny their child life saving treatment.

However, my point isn’t actually about the meaning of words its about the attribution of blame in this case. I see this child and her mother, at least to some degree, as victims.

Who is blaming the mother? Let me remind you of your first comment:

There seems to be a lot of opprobrium on the parents here.

Where the hell was it? In the 25 preceding comments, the only thing close was this statement by lilady:

The parents are medically neglecting their child because they cannot, or will not, deal with the realities of their child’s cancer diagnosis. They’d rather stay in denial and deny their child the only chance she has for long term survival.

The first sentence is unquestionably factually true, leaving the second as the “lot of opprobium” that you stepped in to correct. Since then, you have gone off on a fruitless tangent, complained that nobody’s heeding your insistence that your bland observation “lead to some interesting discussion,” and done nothing else that I can discern.

So,
‘There seems to be a lot of opprobrium on the parents’
‘seems’ indicates my perception – if it is incorrect then something like:
‘JCL I think you are mistaken that there is a lot of opprobrium against the parents’ – would have been an answer. Your right maybe its simply subjective view. Coloured no doubt substantially by the fact that I feel personally some anger and disgust to the parents. Funny how no-one has conradicted me and said this – so are you actually saying that you and lilady feel no anger whatsoever against the parents – you don’t feel disgusted by them, not even a little bit?

‘Since then, you have gone off on a fruitless tangent’
Whether its tangential is debatable – I don’t think so, you do – apparently round here its simply not allowed to disagree with you about what might be relevant or interesting to discuss. It is certainly fruitless now – even if anyone wanted to put in some form of actual reply you and lilady have made it pretty plain that thy will be clubbed to death for their temerity in having an opinion or wishing to discuss something not sanctioned by you.

“complained that nobody’s heeding your insistence that your bland observation “lead to some interesting discussion,”
I’ve mainly complained that my apparently bland,tangential, uninteresting and irrelevnat obvservations are being made the subject of a major shutdown operation – and you know what? I can’t even figure out why you regard it as so objectionable.

So, obviously you guys have nothing better to do than spend time reading my posts purely for the purpose of ‘catching me out’ rather than with any attempt to actualy engage.

I am struggling to understand what you think my motives here are, or what you think you are catching me out at.

I don’t think one sentence that you or lilady has written have addressed any of the substance I’m trying to get across, and you have completely failed to give me any idea at all about what specifically you find so objectionable.

I once knew a multi-millionaire who’s son was diagnosed with a terminal cancer. The father chose an alternative medicine including gold-enemas and whatever else. The son is alive today (who knows why – bad initial diagnosis?) 40 years later. No one dared question that father’s right to decide for his son. And therein lies the question. Should the state decide the fate of a child over the parents? Assuming of course, that the parents are generally of sound mind and honestly believe that their decision is in the child’s best interest. This question is fundamental when you consider the miserable consequences when the state made these decisions for aboriginal people in the not so distant past.

Thanks, jypsy, I was just about to post that link. The interview with the director says all you need to know.

Orac said (emphasis added):

The statement above is simply untrue, and, given that the chiefs must know that what Brian Clement offers is not traditional medicine, it’s hard not to see this statement as, under the most charitable interpretation, disingenuous as hell, and a lie if you’re not as charitable. (At the very minimum there’s a massive case of cognitive dissonance.) Indeed, the other girl, Makayla Sault, is also relying on Brian Clement. Ironically, she is was not even led to her decision to refuse chemotherapy by following the traditional beliefs of her people in that her father is a pastor at an evangelical church and Sault stopped chemotherapy after reporting having seen a vision of Jesus in her hospital room telling her that she was already healed. She is now critically ill, her cancer having predictably relapsed several months after she stopped her chemotherapy.

Makayla Sault has died. See:
http://doubtfulnews.com/2015/01/aboriginal-rights-trump-necessary-treatment-for-child-with-leukemia-in-canada/