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Tuesday July 25, 2006
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Young Cancer Patient Ordered to Undergo Chemotherapy Against Wishes Has Court Order Withdrawn
Social-service workers threatened to take son away from parents and force chemotherapy on him
By John Jalsevac
VIRGINIA, July 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A 16-year-old cancer patient who had been ordered by a judge to undergo chemotherapy treatments against his wishes has had an order to report to a hospital today for chemotherapy lifted, reports WorldNetDaily.
Abraham Cherrix, who suffers from Hodgkin’s disease, is in the middle of a maelstrom of controversy which centers on the rights of patients, and of parents, to make decisions about their own or their children’s medical treatment.
Currently Cherrix, who has unsuccessfully undergone chemotherapy once before, is seeking alternative treatments for his illness in Mexico, treatments that North American health care experts say are less than adequate. Cherrix is receiving the treatments—which, according to WND, involve a sugar-free, organic diet with herbal supplements—with the full support of his parents.
Despite Abraham’s explicit desire not to undergo the painful, prolonged, and less than assuredly successful chemotherapy process once again, and despite his parents’ support for his decision, U.S. social services have sought to legally force the youth to receive the conventional treatment. Abraham has said about his previous chemotherapy treatment, “It was worse than dying itself. It was more like torture.”
Abraham’s father, Jay Cherrix, yesterday related to Sean Hannity on the conservative Hannity radio program how social-service workers have threatened to take his son away from him due to their decision.
“When the social-service worker came and interviewed me,” he told Hannity, “I told him how Abraham felt and about how we had met a person who had been cured by this [alternative treatment] and how we were supporting Abraham's decision. I said, 'What will you do with my little boy? Will you take him somewhere and strap him down and put duct tape on his mouth and pump full of this stuff if he doesn't want it?'
"He said, 'No, I will come to your house with a uniformed officer, and I will take your son by force if he resists. And I will take him to somebody who will do that.'
"And I said, 'I don't think I can let you do that.'"
Hannity responded, "I can't believe we're gonna live in a society where the government now, through a court order, is gonna send some bureaucrat into your house, take you out in handcuffs, slap you on a gurney and stick some medicine in you because they deem that you've made the wrong decision in life. I can't believe we're actually on the verge of that happening here.”
Abraham, who says that he is confident that the alternative treatments are carrying him along the road to recovery has complained about the draining court case: "I should be concentrating on my recovery. This case is taking me away from that."
Besides ordering the youth to resume chemotherapy treatment, last week's decision by a Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court found Abraham's parents guilty of child neglect.
"I'm not going to be an obstacle to my son," Jay Cherrix has been quoted as saying. "If a judge wants to throw me in jail, then he's going to have to do that."
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