I’ve posted several times on the Makayla Sault affair, in which an 11-year-old Canadian First Nations child, stricken with leukemia, was allowed by the government and child protective services to stop her chemotherapy treatment (which in all likelihood would have cured her) in favor of “traditional” medicine—said medicine including a visit to the quackish Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida for a useless dietary regime and “cold laser” treatments.
Makayla, of course, died. And now another 11-year-old Canadian First Nations girl with leukemia, identified only as “J. J.”, has also been allowed to forego treatment, and was also taken for woo-treatment to the Hippocrates Institute. (The head doctor there, Brian Clement, has since been ordered to stop practicing medicine without a license.)
I regard this—and all government exemptions allowing parents to refuse proper medical care for their children on grounds of religion, faith, or “ethnic tradition”—as unconscionable, a privileging of religion over science, and faith over reason. But it’s far more reprehensible than other such clashes, like that between evolution and creationism, because medical-care exemptions, like vaccination exemptions, actually kill children.
There is no reason for any such “philosophical exemptions” in a modern world; the only justifiable ones are when the treatment would be more likely to hurt the child than the faith-based alternative of prayer or cold-laser treatment—a very unlikely situation!—or when conventional medical care would injure the child on genuine medical grounds, as when vaccination could hurt an immunocompromised child. It’s time to end, for once and for all, all religious, faith-based, culture-based, and “philosophical” exemptions from scientific medical care. There is no good justification for such exemptions. They are murderous and, in the case of vaccination, harmful to others who don’t opt out.
I received a link to a Globe and Mail piece about Makayla and her family from reader “lancelotgobbo,” a physician who has developed leukemia and has been public about it on this site. Lancelot sent the link to the article, “Aboriginal girl begged parents to stop chemo treatments, mother says,” with this note:
I’m afraid the family are beginning to cover up their poor decision.
And that’s what the article suggests. Makaya’s mother, Sonya Sault, is now giving public lectures, which I interpret as her trying to justify her decision to stop her child’s chemotherapy in the face of severe public criticism. The article notes:
Doctors gave [Makayla] at most a 72-per-cent chance of survival even with an aggressive chemotherapy treatment, her mother, Sonya Sault, told an audience at McMaster University.
“She became so weak so she couldn’t even stand or sit at times,” she said.
Mr. Sault said the treatment took a heavy physical and emotional toll on the little girl.
“Are you sure I’m getting better? Are you sure we’re doing the right thing? I feel I am getting worse,” she recalled her daughter asking.
Makayla said things like “the chemo is going to kill me,” the mother said, adding that finally she begged the parents to put an end to it.
“Mom, if you have the power to get me out of here, then you have to get me out of here.”
. . . “We know that chemotherapy is not easy for anyone, but for Makayla it was devastating,” she said.
Makayla, she said, understood the “harsh reality of stopping chemotherapy,” but she wanted to try traditional medicine.
“I don’t care if I’m going to die, I don’t want to die weak and sick in a hospital,” Ms. Sault remembered her daughter telling her.
Only a 72% chance? Well, with no treatment Makayla’s chance of surviving acute lymphoblastic leukemia is 0%. What decent parent would accede to their daughter’s request to stop chemo (even if the child did make the request), if the chance of surviving was as high as 72%?
The Saults’ public breast-beating serves no purpose except to exculpate the mother and defuse public criticism. Such talks are in fact harmful, for they may persuade other parents to do the same stupid thing to their kids. Ms. Sault’s talk is unseemly and offensive, although, of course, she has the right to say what she wants. The Globe and Mail piece continues:
Ms. Sault spoke at an event organized by McMaster University’s Indigenous Studies Program in an effort to understand the problems between First Nation peoples and the health-care system.
“Our hearts are broken by the passing of our daughter,” an emotional Ms. Sault said before composing herself – her husband by her side.
Good going, McMaster University! Did you, by the way, counter Ms. Sault’s talk with one by a doctor, laying out the alternatives, their probabilities, and the uselessness of “alternative medicine” for curing leukemia? After all, it was your hospital that tried to insist on continuing the child’s chemotherapy.
I have little sympathy for the Saults’ grief when they had a substantial chance of avoiding their daughter’s death by allowing her chemotherapy to proceed. What they did in fact guaranteed that their daughter would die.
And this strikes me as simply disingenuous:
The mother also said she wanted to clarify “misinformation in the media” about her daughter’s treatment.
The medical staff at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton threatened to get the authorities to apprehend the girl and her two brothers and force chemotherapy treatment upon her, Ms. Sault said.
Makayla started to feel better once the chemotherapy stopped, Ms. Sault said, but she didn’t stop treatment altogether. She continued to receive treatment from her family physician, Dr. Jason Zacks, as well as an oncologist at McMaster hospital. She also received traditional medicine from a healer near her home on the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation.
Then the family went to the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida to get away from the brewing media storm over her case, Ms. Sault said.
Florida’s Department of Health recently issued a cease-and-desist letter to the man who runs the spa, Brian Clement, for practising medicine without a licence.
Ms. Sault said Makayla didn’t go to the Florida spa for cancer treatment, only to try out a new diet that might boost her immune system. Plus, Ms. Sault said, Makayla got to relax and be a kid again, soaking up the sun and swimming in the ocean.
If the diet didn’t constitute “cancer treatment” (and she didn’t mention the cold laser treatment and vitamin injections), what is? The bit about “getting away from the brewing media storm” really incensed the reader who sent me the link, and I agree. It was a way to avoid guilt, and to pretend that they really were trying to cure their daughter. Granted, perhaps Ms. Sault didn’t understand or believe the doctors who gave her the odds that her daughter would die, but how savvy do you have to be to understand the difference between 72% survival and 0% survival? In the face of such obtuseness, the government should have stepped in and tried to save the child’s life.
You might have gathered from my comments as Lancelot Gobbo (look up your Shakespeare for the character with an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other!) that I am not only a physician, but one with leukemia. It really irritates me to see people make such cowardly choices for their children, especially when primary chemotherapy isn’t so very hard to go through these days, with the availability of ondansetron. I learn this week that my chemo has only given me a partial remission, so my future is changing. Nonetheless, I would already be dead if I hadn’t done it, so I’m ahead of the game.
I replied to the [Globe and Mail] article with:
Do, please, continue to highlight the dreadful situation that children with inadequate parents find themselves in. It’s an everyday occurrence that incapable parents provide sub-standard parenting. Teletubbies are not the same as involved and competent parents, and this seems to be an issue for an enormous number of households. But letting a child decide what treatment to accept for a life-threatening disease is an abrogation of parenthood that I can’t quite seem to swallow. That wretched couple must feel dreadful, and if they don’t they ought to!
Yes, of course I’ll continue to highlight the unnecessary deaths of children due to unwarranted respect for faith. Children should not become martyrs to their parents’ religion. But we all should pitch in here—Canadians and Americans alike—for both of our countries are afflicted with this problem. The vast majority of American states, for instance, have religious exemptions for children’s medical care. Call it out when you see it, write letters to newspapers and legislators, and just do what you can. What’s at stake here are the lives of innocent children, brainwashed by their faith-addled parents. Let us not forget that this is not an abstract philosophical issue, but involves people like this:
