Gov’t Usurps Parental Rights, Forces Chemotherapy on 10-Year-Old Amish Girl

An appeals court has overturned the ruling of a Medina County, Ohio Juvenile and Probate Judge who upheld parental rights not to seek chemotherapy in the case of a 10-year-old Amish girl diagnosed with leukemia.

As The Daily Sheeple previously reported, Judge John Lohn twice ruled that the girl’s parents should be allowed to make medical decisions for their child, and that includes their right to choose natural remedies over chemotherapy treatments that the parents testified were making their daughter terribly ill.

Now an appeals court has overturned that ruling, as CBS News reports:

The court ruled that an attorney who’s also a registered nurse should be granted limited guardianship over the girl, Sarah Hershberger, and the power to make medical decisions for her.

Doctors at Akron Children’s Hospital believe Sarah’s leukemia is treatable but says she will die without chemotherapy. The hospital went to court after the family decided to stop chemotherapy and treat Sarah with natural medicines, such as herbs and vitamins.

The appeals court ruling, issued last week, overturns a judge’s decision that said that keeping the parents from making medical decisions for their daughter would take away their rights.

“While we respect the wishes of the parents and believe them to be honest and sincere, we are unwilling to adhere to the wishes of the parents,” the appeals court judges wrote.

The beliefs and convictions of the parents can’t outweigh the rights of the state to protect the child, the court said. It also ordered that the guardian should be appointed right away. [emphasis added]

In other words, under the guise that “beliefs and convictions of the parents can’t outweigh the rights of the state to protect the child,” the State has the ability to simply take away a parent’s right to weigh medical options and ultimately decide what is best for his or her child.

This is not the first time in recent years such a ruling has been made in regards to children with cancer.

Daniel Hauser received national attention when he and his mother fled Minnesota after the 13-year-old refused court-ordered chemotherapy for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2009. The family had opted for alternative treatments in that case as well, and Daniel went on record that he felt chemotherapy was poison and even went on a hunger strike for nine days to protest the treatments. An arrest warrant was eventually issued for the boy’s mother and a nationwide manhunt ensued. Daniel and his mom eventually came back and Daniel was forced to undergo the treatments. CNN reported,

Medical ethicists say parents generally have a legal right to make decisions for their children, but there is a limit. “You have a right, but not an open-ended right,” Arthur Caplan, director of the center for bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said last week. “You can’t compromise the life of your child.”

The question is, who ultimately decides what will “compromise” the life of a child when it comes to potentially dangerous medical treatments? Apparently the answer is the government.

Some have noted that more people die from cancer treatments every year than the actual cancer these treatments are meant to “cure,” and that many natural cancer treatments and therapies have actually been suppressed by Big Pharma in favor of profits over people.

Since its inception, the $200-billion cancer industry has been molded by big financial interests including the Rockefeller Foundation.

Chemotherapy is not a wonder drug without horrible potential side effects and risks. Studies have shown chemotherapy can backfire and actually feed the growth of more cancer cells, causing new cancers and the return of those treated by the heavy doses of radiation therapy:

This protein, dubbed “WNT16B,” is taken up by nearby cancer cells, causing them to “grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy,” said Peter Nelson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He’s the co-author of the study that documented this phenomenon, published in Nature Medicine.

This protein, it turns out, explains why cancer tumors grow more aggressively following chemotherapy treatments. In essence, chemotherapy turns healthy cells into WNT16B factories which churn out this “activator” chemical that accelerates cancer tumor growth.

Our corporatist government and its alphabet organizations replete with revolving door ties to Big Pharma should not be allowed to force potentially dangerous treatments on people or their children if they do not wish to take them. If the government won’t leave the Amish alone, there’s no reason to expect it to leave the rest of us alone.

Sadly, with the push for total government medical control under Obamacare, stories like these will surely become more and more commonplace in the future.

Melissa Melton is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media. Wake the flock up!