Kidnapping your own child?

Utah Parents Arraigned on Felony Kidnapping Charges In Medical Freedom of
Choice Case

© By Peter Chowka

(September 15, 2003) The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Despite explosive growth in the public's use of alternative medicine (AM)
and notable advances in AM's official acceptance, it is still illegal in
most states for parents of sick children to eschew conventional medicine in
favor of less toxic, innovative treatment options.

In scores of cases that have gained public attention during the past quarter
century, the scenario is almost exactly the same: A minor child is diagnosed
with a serious illness, often a form of cancer. After careful consideration,
and usually after an experience with some conventional treatments which are
deemed by the family to be problematic, the family chooses to explore or
employ an alternative approach. But state authorities, usually alerted to
the situation by medical doctors or hospital officials, quickly become
involved - ordering the parents to have their child treated with
conventional allopathic therapies, or else face criminal prosecution and the
child being taken away from them for forced treatment.

In recent times, the highest profile case of this kind involved Thomas
Navarro. The Navarro family's struggles for medical freedom even figured in
the 2000 Republican Presidential primary race when candidate Alan Keyes, PhD
took up their cause.

In the summer of 2003, another patient's case achieved regional, and some
degree of national, attention. And with fall imminent, it isn't over yet.

Last June, authorities in Utah targeted the parents of Parker Jensen for
scrutiny and prosecution after the 12 year old boy received a diagnosis of
Ewing's sarcoma, a relatively rare form of cancer. Parker's parents, Daren
and Barbara Jensen, failed to follow doctors' orders to immediately begin
chemotherapy. Instead, they researched the literature and decided to take
Parker to see noted alternative clinician Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD in
Houston, Texas.

Meanwhile, Utah officials moved quickly to drag the family into court. On
June 16, after Parker reportedly missed one doctor's appointment, a former
physician at the Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City
contacted the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) and filed a
medical neglect claim. The next day, the DCFS petitioned the juvenile court
to hold an expedited hearing in the matter. On June 20, Parker's parents
were in court facing a judge.

According to one news account, Daren Jensen was "surprised when the state
never asked for his side before his family faced the judge. 'I was doing it
right, before one doctor took me straight to court because I disagreed with
him,' Daren Jensen said."

Parker had been diagnosed with cancer on May 19. The family felt that they
were being given little time to make informed decisions about their son's
care and no options other than chemotherapy - and that meetings with doctors
were "threatening." Their requests for further tests before chemotherapy
treatment commenced were considered inappropriate.

The judge in the case ordered chemotherapy to begin on August 8. The
Jensens, however, left Utah before that time and went to Pocatello, Idaho to
visit family before they planned to go to Houston to see Burzynski, who they
hoped would perform more tests on Parker. The judge ordered Parker to be
placed in state custody on Aug. 8 after the Jensens' lawyer told the court
that the family had not started chemotherapy. On Aug. 15, kidnapping charges
against the parents were filed by prosecutors. Barbara Jensen and Parker
went underground in Houston, while Daren, who was arrested on the kidnapping
charge after a car accident, stayed in Pocatello to fight extradition back
to Utah.

In any case, Burzynski's hands were tied clinically. After several decades
of battling the medical Establishment, the internationally known innovative
clinician is forced to work under strict oversight and close regulation by
the Food and Drug Administration and cannot accept patients for treatment
with his antineoplaston therapy unless he is conducting an FDA-approved
clinical trial on the kind of cancer the patient has. Currently, Burzynski
does not have a trial underway for Ewing's sarcoma.

On September 10, Daren and Barbara Jensen were arraigned on felony
kidnapping charges. There are reports that both sides are seeking a plea
agreement. It's likely that part of the agreement will entail Parker
receiving standard chemotherapy.

I am reminded at this point of something my late father used to say: "You
can't fight city hall."

Medical Freedom: An Impossible Dream?

It is useful to consider some comments made about earlier cases involving
medical freedom of choice for families and children. Speaking about the
Navarros during a nationally televised debate on January 10, 2000, Alan
Keyes said, "Responsible people should be allowed to make responsible
choices. They should not have the government standing in the way. . .This
isn't just a debate over abstractions. It is a debate about how we can
restore to the American people those liberties and that sense of
responsibility which will not only save the life of this child but save the
life and future of this country."

In the case of the Navarros, the FDA blocked Thomas's access to the
Burzynski therapy, the family's preferred treatment option - until after all
conventional therapies had been tried and failed and the child was
considered "terminal." Thomas died in December 2001 after an odyssey in
which he received both conventional and alternative treatments, having been
denied access early on to the Burzynski therapy.

While courts in the U.S, such as a New York State appellate court in 1987
(in the case Schneider vs. Revici), have upheld the right for an adult "to
avoid surgery and chemotherapy. . .[and] to go outside approved medical
methods in search of an unconventional treatment," the situation is more
complex when minor children are involved. Although one attorney commented in
1979, "It's proper for courts to determine if parents are competent - it is
not proper for the courts to make medical decisions," individual states and
the federal government have often intervened to prevent parents from
choosing alternative therapies for their critically ill children.

The highest profile medical freedom case in the past three decades, even
more prominent than Thomas Navarro's, involved Chad Green, a Massachusetts
boy who was three years old when he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1977.
When Chad's parents, Jerry and Diana, opposed chemotherapy and sought
natural treatments for their son, Chad was made a ward of the state and
compelled to undergo chemotherapy, some of it experimental at the time. In
January 1979, the Greens fled the country with Chad for Mexico, where the
boy had access to alternative therapies. The story of the family's medical
and legal odyssey was front page news for months, and the Greens ran the
risk of being arrested for "kidnapping" their own child if they re-entered
the U.S.

In that case, after Chad died in October 1979 (of a heart-nerve blockage
according to a pathologist associated with the University of California at
San Diego), then-Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) went on the record supporting
Jerry and Diana Green's actions and said that he would not extradite them to
Massachusetts from California. In December 1980, in a deal with prosecutors,
the Greens returned to Massachusetts and offered a public apology for
flaunting a court's order not to remove their child from the state. In
exchange, all charges against them were dropped.

It's hard to imagine now, but until the early 1970s established legal
opinion tended to favor families' wishes in cases concerning the rights of
parents to refuse conventional medical intervention, or to choose an
unpopular alternative, for their children. Dr. A. D. Kelly, secretary of the
Canadian Medical Association, for example, wrote in the CMA Journal
(February 18, 1967), "Parents of minors. . .possess the right to interpret
the will of the patient, and we should accept and respect their wishes." In
1968, a council of judges in the U.S. wrote in "Guides to the Judge in
Medical Orders Affecting Children" (Crime and Delinquency, April 1968), "If
there is a choice of procedures. . .the doctors must take the medically
riskier but parentally unobjectionable course."

In 1979, at the height of the Chad Green case, I asked noted Massachusetts
attorney Benedict FitzGerald why medico-legal opinion seemed to be changing.
"The courts," he said, "have attempted to take over and be the final
arbiters in the medical field, because the medical people have become more
powerful. They'd like to control the treatment of of everybody, even people
who are not minors."

Today, over two decades after the Chad Green case and the observations of
FitzGerald, the medical Establishment, working hand in glove with state and
federal governments, has more power than ever. Meanwhile, the larger
philosophical or ideological issues raised by these cases remain unresolved,
as indicated by the situation now involving the family of Parker Jensen.

As I wrote in early 2000 about the Navarro case, "Unless the Navarros are
granted what they believe are their rights as citizens to use the treatments
of their choice, and these rights are finally guaranteed and protected for
all Americans, other families are sure to experience similar traumas in the
future, on top of the shock that accompanies a clinical diagnosis of serious
or terminal childhood illness."

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