Another alarming story!

[Margo]

thetruthaboutcancer.com/med...

[shaws Administrator]

Thanks Margo. It is just awful how parental decisions can be ignored. I think our instincts go into overdrive when decisions are taken without agreement but must be terrible for the child who is also removed from their family and homes.

[Margo in reply to shaws]

What is so very frightening Shaws is that it is happening in America and whatever goes on there comes here. It is similar to that case recently that people mentioned on here. The woman was treating her child and the authorities started poking their noses in.

Oh well it can only get worse!

[shaws Administrator in reply to Margo]

We shall have to be on the alert and get a petition going should it become a reality.

As Doctor Lowe has stated Big Pharma are happy with levothyroxine due to the profits they make. Also, if not given the correct dose, other prescriptions are given for remaining symptoms, i.e. pain relief, anti-ds, antacids etc etc.

[Margo]

Yes I know Shaws, a scandal!

[Hidden]

This does not read like a dispassionate and balanced site. I wouldn't take what it says as anywhere close to the whole truth.

[Chancery in reply to Hidden]

Agreed, Asp. The site is singularly prejudicial in its reporting, and when you see the boy's parent wanted him to be cured with juicing, "nutritional therapies" and praying to God, you can see why the authorities would be concerned. Leukaemia is not a simple cancer with a high cure rate, especially not rare cancers, as this boy had.

While it is easy to say authorities shouldn't interfere in parental decisions, we'd all be screaming bloody blue murder if this was something we DIDN'T approve of (I don't feel too hot on juicing and praying to God, for example). When the Baby Ps of the world get their day in the media we are all yelling the odds about "How could this happen? Where were the authorities?" We can't suddenly tell the authorities to back off because we like juicing too. It's their job to police all potential childhood abuses and this sounds like it could have been a potential abuse, even if it was done with love and for the best of intentions.

[nightdancer in reply to Hidden]

I live in the US. This is nothing but 'paranoia mongering', plain and simple. Consider the source, these "conspiracy" web sites need to be read with a LARGE grain of salt!

[Margo]

Hear hear Londinium!

[Justiina]

Parents can be useless drunks etc and nobody cares but when they want better treatment for their kids suddenly that is a valid reason... sigh.

[Jeannie77]

I don't know about individual cases, but the Americans have a reason to be worried. Treatments under insurance = profit, and the big health companies (not big pharma that is a different issue (just as bad as we know)) have been caught telling people with catarrh that they have lung cancer, for example. And actually removing healthy lungs!! At the moment the NHS is not legally obliged to put shareholders first, and any procedures are more likely to be viewed a loss than a profit, so we are not overtreated in general, more like undertreated. Mostly, though, the NHS does very good work, has been rated internationally as the best in the world, and I have to be biased as it is keeping me alive by providing me with very expensive meds free of charge. I would have only a few weeks without them (from bitter experience). Everyone here should be aware that the NHS will be opened up wide to big USA healthcare companies, when an upcoming trade deal is signed. Our politicians have already agreed to this, and the person they have put in charge was an arch healthcare privatiser in the USA. Already to smooth this through, laws have been passed to say profit comes before peoples' health in the UK (well England). Increasingly, much of what passes under the NHS logo hides a private company like Virgin, actually delivering the service. This privatisation will be irreversible due to a system the Multinationals will have in place with this treaty for suing for possible loss of profits. They could sue the country into banktrupsy. They seize assets, and have already done so in another country, under a similar, but much weaker, trade treaty, so a government can't just refuse to pay. In the USA health insurance for a reasonably heathy family stands at around $1.200 per month. Perhaps surprisingly (I work with US healthcare patients) the service is as bad, or even worse, and people diagnosed as terminal stay in work, as they coudn't afford pain relieving meds otherwise. I have brittle Schmidt's, which includes hypothyroidism (not one of my endoctrine glands works). I am terrified.

[humanbean in reply to Jeannie77]

You're talking about TTIP? That scares me rigid too.

[Margo]

Truly terrifying Jeannie77

[Everdean]

Dreadful!!!!

[greygoose]

Other people have been talking about these kidnappings in the US, too. It's not just this site.

[Hidden]

Dispassionate reporting is very, very difficult in these "children taken by authority" cases. It is rarely even attempted. The parents will sometimes be in the right, of course. But the reporter, even one who is trying to see both sides, and that may be a rare attempt, is not always getting the whole truth from the parents, or, of course, seeing the full court documents, because it would unlawful for those to be available and also sometimes because the parents are being manipulative.

Parents aren't always the best judges of what is right for their children. Sometimes they will be fundamentalist, or ignorant and obstinate, or even crazed. Sometimes there will be big issues - drugs, violence, alcohol, psychiatric illnesses - which are being hidden from reporters. The reporters on newspapers are looking for the most emotive, readable story, so it is tempting to take what the parents say at face value, especially since they will usually be obviously, and genuinely, very upset. The BBC is meant to attempt dispassion, but even it has problems in this area.

The courts have to try to work out what is in the best interest of the child. This is not easy. The child's privacy has to be protected, and is protected by law. Social services and medics can't comment on individual cases - so always, only one side is being heard. I don't think medics are always right, of course not, they are often wrong, often unscientific - nor social services - but parents aren't either.