Teen forced to continue chemotherapy against her will.

[Warpoet]

Yeah. That isn't the law, though.

So? Citing the law does not suddenly make your argument a sound one.

Unless you believe that adults should be forced to undergo treatment when they refuse it for scientifically unsound reasons, then we both agree that people should be allowed to make bad decisions about their health care. I am saying that that right should not be categorically denied to someone simply because they're not 18 yet. And I'm not seeing any rational arguments being presented as to why it should.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yeah. That isn't the law, though.

By my logic if Patient A wants to live, then she shouldn't undergo a plan of treatment that has very little chance of doing it.

So society gets to decide how long you live and how you live?

Could you please address the OP article. She doesn't want to die. Her course of action will kill her. The state has decided that the doctor's know what course of action will best provide the outcome the teen actually wants, i.e. to live.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Let me reiterate (my bold)

No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestioned authority of law.

That's a big deal.

Mature Minor Doctrine

The mature minor doctrine is a statutory, regulatory, or common law policy accepting that an unemancipated minor patient may possess the maturity to choose or reject a particular health care treatment, sometimes without the knowledge or agreement of parents, and should be permitted to do so.

Case

We let Steve Jobs choose his fate.

 

[coloradoatheist]

So society gets to decide how long you live and how you live?

Could you please address the OP article. She doesn't want to die. Her course of action will kill her. The state has decided that the doctor's know what course of action will best provide the outcome the teen actually wants, i.e. to live.

There wasn't much in it to say either way. Just that she ran away from home. I wanted to make sure you are consistent too and brings in a different argument, but is a women under 18 who becomes pregnant then a ward a society who can then dictate whether she has a baby?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If her decisions are based on a reasonable understanding of the medical condition, yes.

From the NPR story, the mother is certain the daughter can survive without treatment, so I don't think the hurdle is passed at all.

"They are also killing her body. They are killing her organs. They're killing her insides. It's not even a matter of dying. She's not going to die," Fortin said.

The teen has a disease that will kill her. Treatment will likely save her life (85% according to the NPR report). This isn't about a terminal patient who wants to die in peace. So fuck her freedom and save her life so she can live to whine about it later.

This shit pisses me off. It is as bad as the anti-vaccination crowd.

When I originally saw this I thought it was a case of not wanting to go through chemotherapy to just prolong the nearly inevitable--a decision I would make myself.

However, from this report it sounds like they are deluded, the state is right to force chemotherapy.

(From what I saw before I question that 85%--I believe that's the overall cure rate, not the cure rate for her diagnosis. The numbers were a lot more grim for her.)

 

[arkirk]

It sounds like the medical profession needs to make a better case with its patient. It looks like they are right about her needing the treatment, but something has blocked her cognition of this fact. I feel all medical treatment needs to be consensual. This case appears to be one of failing to communicate. I don't think a court can solve this problem. What if an insurance company decided it is not covered. Our medical profession has allowed itself to become a pure bucket of worms. Allowing this girl' sentiments to fall out of alignment with the best medical advice is the problem. The mother feels the girl will not die without treatment. How did she get that idea?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

If her decisions are based on a reasonable understanding of the medical condition, yes.

From the NPR story, the mother is certain the daughter can survive without treatment, so I don't think the hurdle is passed at all.

The teen has a disease that will kill her. Treatment will likely save her life (85% according to the NPR report). This isn't about a terminal patient who wants to die in peace. So fuck her freedom and save her life so she can live to whine about it later.

This shit pisses me off. It is as bad as the anti-vaccination crowd.

When I originally saw this I thought it was a case of not wanting to go through chemotherapy to just prolong the nearly inevitable--a decision I would make myself.

However, from this report it sounds like they are deluded, the state is right to force chemotherapy.

(From what I saw before I question that 85%--I believe that's the overall cure rate, not the cure rate for her diagnosis. The numbers were a lot more grim for her.)

Feel free to cite a different number instead of just tossing one statistic and muddy the waters.

- - - Updated - - -

Allowing this girl' sentiments to fall out of alignment with the best medical advice is the problem. The mother feels the girl will not die without treatment. How did she get that idea?

She is a fucking idiot. She is like a person that thinks vaccinations are responsible for autism.

- - - Updated - - -

Could you please address the OP article. She doesn't want to die. Her course of action will kill her. The state has decided that the doctor's know what course of action will best provide the outcome the teen actually wants, i.e. to live.

There wasn't much in it to say either way. Just that she ran away from home. I wanted to make sure you are consistent too and brings in a different argument, but is a women under 18 who becomes pregnant then a ward a society who can then dictate whether she has a baby?

Go start another thread.

 

[Juma]

So society gets to decide how long you live and how you live?

Of course. Now you are plain silly.

 

[Toni]

It's an interesting quesiton because she could turn around and ask for an emancipation from her parent and then choose her own fate. It's been decided that 18 is the age to make a medical decision.

Lots of things have been "decided" by the government, but that doesn't make them right. I don't see any rational reason why a teenager who is capable of making a decision with same clarity of mind as an adult shouldn't be allowed to.

Whether or not that's the case in this specific instance is a separate question.

The fact is, based upon research in the areas pertaining to brain science, a teenager is not able to make rational decisions with the same clarity of thought as an adult although admittedly, her parents set a mighty low bar there.

The issue to me is that this girl is being fed disinformation by the same people who are supposed to help her learn skills and information that will help her be able to reason with the clarity of an adult.

There is significant case law about parental rights to withhold standard medical treatment from their children who require such treatment to survive a serious illness.

She's still a minor. It would be much shakier if she were not and probably the court would have made a different decision.

As not PC as this is, I will go on record that I don't believe most 18 year olds are mature enough to make a lot of adult decisions. Some industries agree with me: try renting a car before you are 25 or a hotel room under 21.

 

[Archimedes]

I feel all medical treatment needs to be consensual.

ALL medical treatment? How are hospitals expected to function if they can't perform medical treatment on unconscious patients, patients below the age of consent, patients drunk or high and unable to legally consent to anything, in emergency situations where the patient's life and health is in immediate risk?

 

[bilby]

Patients should have the right to choose their desired outcome; and the right to choose between different means to achieve that outcome, where those means have similar probabilities of success.

In this case, the patient has chosen her desired outcome - continued survival - and her ill-educated opinion about how to achieve that outcome should be overruled by the medical professional's well informed opinion.

She has a right to a second professional opinion; but if that concurs with the first, that should be the end of the matter.

Her age doesn't enter into it from a moral perspective. That it is important legally just shows that the law is an ass.

If she chose to die, I would support that choice; but having chosen to live, she needs to let the professionals go about achieving her objective without her unqualified and erroneous input into the means by which they achieve this.

 

[Warpoet]

The fact is, based upon research in the areas pertaining to brain science, a teenager is not able to make rational decisions with the same clarity of thought as an adult although admittedly, her parents set a mighty low bar there.

I imagine that is a very complicated area where one can only speak in massively general terms due to variation amongst individuals. But whatever the threshold of cognitive ability and/or personal independence is, it is not magically crossed on someone's 18th birthday. Given the hugely relevant issues of personal freedom involved here, there should be some mechanism in place for people under 18 to be able to make these decisions for themselves, to be granted on a case-by-case basis (apparently this is true in some states)

 

[credoconsolans]

The court ruled correctly. The teen hasn't a real good grasp on things.

She's an attention-getting teen who thinks refusing 'poison' like chemotherapy is akin to getting attention by going vegan and telling everyone else they're eating unhealthily.

She's acting like a drama-queen teenager. She's not dying if she takes treatment. 85% survival rate if she 'takes her medicine', basically.

She's a child with an immature POV. Give her the chemo. She can whine about her lost rights later when she lives to grow up.

 

[Davka]

What makes this such a mindfuck of a situation is that she's 17 years old, mere months away from having the legal right to determine her own fate (even if her determination is stupid and based on pseudoscience). But here's the thing: laws cannot be based on subjective feelings and beliefs. If we are to determine that minor children do not have the same rights as adults (and it's pretty impossible to logically argue otherwise), then we are going to have to choose an admittedly arbitrary line between minor and adult.

I doubt anyone would claim that a 3-year-old has the right not to be immunized against measles, mumps, and rubella because needles are scary and she doesn't want a shot. We'd side with her parents, who clearly know better. But then we're stuck with creating a legal line between kids and adults. Currently that line is 18 years.

Which makes for rational shitstorms because it's patently obvious that someone who is going to turn 18 tomorrow is not any less capable than that same person on the day after their 18th birthday. But the line has to be drawn somewhere, unless we want to grant toddlers the right to vote and drive. So we end up with logical lines which are illogical on the face of it.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Cancer therapy is counter intuitive. It works by making the patient sick. This girl may be listening to her intuition over her doctors. Doctors aren't trained to deal with these problems and often they're not good at it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It sounds like the medical profession needs to make a better case with its patient. It looks like they are right about her needing the treatment, but something has blocked her cognition of this fact. I feel all medical treatment needs to be consensual. This case appears to be one of failing to communicate. I don't think a court can solve this problem. What if an insurance company decided it is not covered. Our medical profession has allowed itself to become a pure bucket of worms. Allowing this girl' sentiments to fall out of alignment with the best medical advice is the problem. The mother feels the girl will not die without treatment. How did she get that idea?

As they say, you can't make the horse drink.

That's the position they are in--they are in denial. They see how ugly chemotherapy is and rather than accept that the choices are chemotherapy or die they deny the need of chemotherapy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When I originally saw this I thought it was a case of not wanting to go through chemotherapy to just prolong the nearly inevitable--a decision I would make myself.

However, from this report it sounds like they are deluded, the state is right to force chemotherapy.

(From what I saw before I question that 85%--I believe that's the overall cure rate, not the cure rate for her diagnosis. The numbers were a lot more grim for her.)

Feel free to cite a different number instead of just tossing one statistic and muddy the waters.

I don't recall the exact number I found.

The basic problem is that she has a stage 3/4 case (That's filtered through some reporter, I agree it doesn't make sense.) Look up the survival curve and it was only about 2/3 chance of 5-year survival which means the overall odds are even worse than that.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The fact is, based upon research in the areas pertaining to brain science, a teenager is not able to make rational decisions with the same clarity of thought as an adult although admittedly, her parents set a mighty low bar there.

I imagine that is a very complicated area where one can only speak in massively general terms due to variation amongst individuals. But whatever the threshold of cognitive ability and/or personal independence is, it is not magically crossed on someone's 18th birthday. Given the hugely relevant issues of personal freedom involved here, there should be some mechanism in place for people under 18 to be able to make these decisions for themselves, to be granted on a case-by-case basis (apparently this is true in some states)

What personal freedom? If she stays the course she won't have any freedom at all, she'll be dead, which isn't what she wants. In an absurd twist the US seems to be able to pride itself on, the court has to force a person to do what they don't want in order to see the outcome they do want.

 

[Warpoet]

What personal freedom? If she stays the course she won't have any freedom at all, she'll be dead, which isn't what she wants. In an absurd twist the US seems to be able to pride itself on, the court has to force a person to do what they don't want in order to see the outcome they do want.

So again, let's just force everyone else who refuses necessary treatments on non-scientific grounds to receive them while we're at it, since it's apparently the government's responsibility to make these decisions for them.

 

[Davka]

What personal freedom? If she stays the course she won't have any freedom at all, she'll be dead, which isn't what she wants. In an absurd twist the US seems to be able to pride itself on, the court has to force a person to do what they don't want in order to see the outcome they do want.

So again, let's just force everyone else who refuses necessary treatments on non-scientific grounds to receive them while we're at it, since it's apparently the government's responsibility to make these decisions for them.

Yes, let's all pretend that there is no difference between a minor and an adult. We can give toddlers the vote while we're at it.