Teen with cancer choose alternative medicine over chemotherapy
This case has hit the national news outlets a couple of times and I'm sure there are journalist hopefuls wanting to go "Oprah" all over this in the hopes it's the next Schiavo-story ratings booster. To point out the parady endemic in our time, everyone takes what issue is popular and slants it in the support of their own agendas. One simple argument used mostly by those with one agenda is, "how can you deny this boy and his parents the freedom to choose whatever type of cancer treatment they want?"
Simple answer: because there is a law. There are laws created with the intention to protect the rights of the individual, including children. In our society, there are laws intended to protect children from a dangerous or otherwise oppressive environment in the home. There are laws that dictate the standards and conduct of professionals, including those in health care and our social servants. There are laws that help protect us from making uninformed, unwise or dangerous decisions. They help ensure that we don't toss our life savings away in a to-good-to-be-true savings and loan investment. They help us to better understand what we are getting when we make a purchase, and that we aren't otherwise swindled, cheated or decieved.
The law that has "denied a freedoom" in this case was created to satisfy one of these cultural altruistic intentions. In this case, by law, health care professionals acted when they felt the child was in danger of morbidity and death when he did not take advantage of treatment that has been scientifically and professionally formulated to be the best course of treatment with the best possible chance for a successful outcome.
For those who scoff at the medical establishment for dictating such care, remember, there are those that scoffed at banks in favor of savings-and-loans. Mainstream alternative medicine is plagued with charletons, crooks, and hucksters who already operate on the fringes of the consumer protection laws outlined above. Which one of them are you singly going to trust in lieu of the whole of modern medicine that is backed by consensus of empiric understanding or science, and that is operating under close scrutiny of government oversight and self-regulation.
Fortunetely, we live under a government that allows us to evaluate the effects of the law and change the statutes by consensus to better reflect our cultural intentions.
The glowing depiction of our health care system above is only in comparison to the alternative of alternative medicine. Our health care system is not above scrutiny or non-deserving of skepticism. Medical science is controlled and directed by social mores and cultural influences.
Cancer is indiscriminate, and there are few things that can enter the lives of
individuals and their loved ones that is more powerful. Many are often left to fend for themselves for everything outside the clinical medical treatment, with little progressive support.
Cancer clinic care is something I have very little experience with. Is treatment sometimes recommended and carried out mostly because if it is not, and outcomes are bad, there will be hell-to-pay, so to speak? I wonder if recommended treatments are
sometimes based too heavily on those 5-year mortality/morbidity predictions and extrapolations. Does it sometimes come across as, for example, "hey, Starchild, we're going to subject you to loosing 9 pounds, having your hair fall out, and basically suffering you through 4-8 weeks of feeling like you have the mother of all flus -again, because in doing so we think you have a 12% better chance of being
better in 5 years than you would be otherwise"? There's also the historical case study of hundreds if not thousands of chemo with bone marrow transplants done on breast cancer woman that were finally shown to be more detrimental than helpful. Finally, one clear conclusion of the recent Dartmouth Atlas Project study was that more treatment and/or more intensive care does not correlate with better outcomes or higher patient satisfaction.
I think maybe it is time oncology care focus a little more on cultural values of the society, the family and the patient, along with the 5-year mortality/morbidity predictions. Then again, maybe it's not that easy.
dras
Simple answer: because there is a law. There are laws created with the intention to protect the rights of the individual, including children. In our society, there are laws intended to protect children from a dangerous or otherwise oppressive environment in the home. There are laws that dictate the standards and conduct of professionals, including those in health care and our social servants. There are laws that help protect us from making uninformed, unwise or dangerous decisions. They help ensure that we don't toss our life savings away in a to-good-to-be-true savings and loan investment. They help us to better understand what we are getting when we make a purchase, and that we aren't otherwise swindled, cheated or decieved.
The law that has "denied a freedoom" in this case was created to satisfy one of these cultural altruistic intentions. In this case, by law, health care professionals acted when they felt the child was in danger of morbidity and death when he did not take advantage of treatment that has been scientifically and professionally formulated to be the best course of treatment with the best possible chance for a successful outcome.
For those who scoff at the medical establishment for dictating such care, remember, there are those that scoffed at banks in favor of savings-and-loans. Mainstream alternative medicine is plagued with charletons, crooks, and hucksters who already operate on the fringes of the consumer protection laws outlined above. Which one of them are you singly going to trust in lieu of the whole of modern medicine that is backed by consensus of empiric understanding or science, and that is operating under close scrutiny of government oversight and self-regulation.
Fortunetely, we live under a government that allows us to evaluate the effects of the law and change the statutes by consensus to better reflect our cultural intentions.
The glowing depiction of our health care system above is only in comparison to the alternative of alternative medicine. Our health care system is not above scrutiny or non-deserving of skepticism. Medical science is controlled and directed by social mores and cultural influences.
Cancer is indiscriminate, and there are few things that can enter the lives of
individuals and their loved ones that is more powerful. Many are often left to fend for themselves for everything outside the clinical medical treatment, with little progressive support.
Cancer clinic care is something I have very little experience with. Is treatment sometimes recommended and carried out mostly because if it is not, and outcomes are bad, there will be hell-to-pay, so to speak? I wonder if recommended treatments are
sometimes based too heavily on those 5-year mortality/morbidity predictions and extrapolations. Does it sometimes come across as, for example, "hey, Starchild, we're going to subject you to loosing 9 pounds, having your hair fall out, and basically suffering you through 4-8 weeks of feeling like you have the mother of all flus -again, because in doing so we think you have a 12% better chance of being
better in 5 years than you would be otherwise"? There's also the historical case study of hundreds if not thousands of chemo with bone marrow transplants done on breast cancer woman that were finally shown to be more detrimental than helpful. Finally, one clear conclusion of the recent Dartmouth Atlas Project study was that more treatment and/or more intensive care does not correlate with better outcomes or higher patient satisfaction.
I think maybe it is time oncology care focus a little more on cultural values of the society, the family and the patient, along with the 5-year mortality/morbidity predictions. Then again, maybe it's not that easy.
dras
posted by nawledge at
8:31 PM
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