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SIX NATIONS, Ont. — * For Laurie Hill, resident of Canada’s largest aboriginal community, it’s just wrong to suggest that modern medicine is the only way to treat cancer and other serious diseases.
She stands firmly behind the Six Nations neighbours who took their 11-year-old daughter with leukemia out of chemotherapy, and are treating her with traditional, but unproven, native methods and other alternative health-care instead.
“There’s a fear of [aboriginal remedies] or denial of it. If things can’t be quantified or qualified, to them it’s irrelevant,” said Ms. Hill, as she shopped at Ancestral Voices Healing Centre Thursday. “Who are they [doctors] to say she will make it with their treatments. Just because they have a degree, that makes them more knowledgeable?”
Her perspective on what seems to be a widening cultural divide received some recognition from a surprising quarter Thursday: *the judge deciding whether the cancer-stricken girl should be forced back into chemotherapy.
As an extraordinary court case in nearby Brantford moved toward an end, a lawyer for McMaster Children’s Hospital argued that child-welfare authorities should have used their power to require the young woman to stay in treatment. With chemo, childhood leukemia now has a survival rate in the range of 90%, and remains a likely death sentence without it, experts say.
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But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said.
“Even if we say there is not one child who has been cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia by traditional methods, is that a reason to invoke child protection?” asked Justice Edward, noting that the girl’s mother believes she is doing what is best for her daughter.
“Are we to second guess her and say ‘You know what, we don’t care?’ … Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value.”
Daphne Jarvis, lawyer for McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, replied that the girl’s mother had made it clear she wants her child to be cured, and yet no evidence * — either empirical or “experiential” — was entered in the court hearing that traditional methods successfully treat childhood leukemia.
In fact, doctors testified that another 11-year-old First Nations girl with cancer who dropped out of chemo at the same hospital earlier this year has now relapsed, said the lawyer.
“That is clear and unequivocal,” she said.
The girl in the latest case, whose identity is subject to a court-ordered publication ban, has spent the last several weeks in a Florida alternative-health centre, she and her parents deciding she had had enough of chemotherapy after 10 days of the treatment.
The hospital called on Brant Child and Family Services, which investigated and eventually decided it would not intervene, saying the case was a matter of health-care consent, not child protection.
McMaster Children’s then took the unusual step of asking a judge to force the agency to get the child back into chemo. The hearing has taken place sporadically over the last month, and is expected to conclude next Wednesday.
Ms. Jarvis conceded that the province’s Health Care Consent Act allows a patient of any age to potentially be capable of agreeing, or not, to treatment. In this case, though, it was clear to doctors that the girl was a typical 11-year-old and not sophisticated enough to make such a life-and-death decision.
When the parents then refused to keep her in chemo, it became a child-welfare matter, the lawyer said.
But Mark Handelman, the children’s aid society’s lawyer, said later that doctors did not properly determine if the girl was capable of giving or denying consent, as required by the health consent law.
“The girl didn’t even get a fair trial,” he said. “None of her rights under the Act were respected.”
Even if the hospital had determined she was too young to decide, they should have gone to Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board to resolve the dispute, he said.
Back at Six Nations, meanwhile, Ancestral Voices employee Hayley Doxtater said aboriginal remedies are becoming increasingly popular. She pointed to a cancer treatment — a collection of herbs including slippery elm and turkey rhubarb root * — that she said one customer has repeatedly traveled an hour from Toronto to buy for a sick friend.
“We have people come in here who are so happy that something works,” she said. “They’ll say ‘That stuff is amazing.’ “
She stands firmly behind the Six Nations neighbours who took their 11-year-old daughter with leukemia out of chemotherapy, and are treating her with traditional, but unproven, native methods and other alternative health-care instead.
“There’s a fear of [aboriginal remedies] or denial of it. If things can’t be quantified or qualified, to them it’s irrelevant,” said Ms. Hill, as she shopped at Ancestral Voices Healing Centre Thursday. “Who are they [doctors] to say she will make it with their treatments. Just because they have a degree, that makes them more knowledgeable?”
Her perspective on what seems to be a widening cultural divide received some recognition from a surprising quarter Thursday: *the judge deciding whether the cancer-stricken girl should be forced back into chemotherapy.
As an extraordinary court case in nearby Brantford moved toward an end, a lawyer for McMaster Children’s Hospital argued that child-welfare authorities should have used their power to require the young woman to stay in treatment. With chemo, childhood leukemia now has a survival rate in the range of 90%, and remains a likely death sentence without it, experts say.
Related
Leukemia treatment disputes reopen debate whether parents should have final say over children’s welfare
First Nations settle old grievances as they unite in fight against Ottawa to right enmities of the past
But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said.
“Even if we say there is not one child who has been cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia by traditional methods, is that a reason to invoke child protection?” asked Justice Edward, noting that the girl’s mother believes she is doing what is best for her daughter.
“Are we to second guess her and say ‘You know what, we don’t care?’ … Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value.”
Daphne Jarvis, lawyer for McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton, replied that the girl’s mother had made it clear she wants her child to be cured, and yet no evidence * — either empirical or “experiential” — was entered in the court hearing that traditional methods successfully treat childhood leukemia.
In fact, doctors testified that another 11-year-old First Nations girl with cancer who dropped out of chemo at the same hospital earlier this year has now relapsed, said the lawyer.
“That is clear and unequivocal,” she said.
The girl in the latest case, whose identity is subject to a court-ordered publication ban, has spent the last several weeks in a Florida alternative-health centre, she and her parents deciding she had had enough of chemotherapy after 10 days of the treatment.
The hospital called on Brant Child and Family Services, which investigated and eventually decided it would not intervene, saying the case was a matter of health-care consent, not child protection.
McMaster Children’s then took the unusual step of asking a judge to force the agency to get the child back into chemo. The hearing has taken place sporadically over the last month, and is expected to conclude next Wednesday.
Ms. Jarvis conceded that the province’s Health Care Consent Act allows a patient of any age to potentially be capable of agreeing, or not, to treatment. In this case, though, it was clear to doctors that the girl was a typical 11-year-old and not sophisticated enough to make such a life-and-death decision.
When the parents then refused to keep her in chemo, it became a child-welfare matter, the lawyer said.
But Mark Handelman, the children’s aid society’s lawyer, said later that doctors did not properly determine if the girl was capable of giving or denying consent, as required by the health consent law.
“The girl didn’t even get a fair trial,” he said. “None of her rights under the Act were respected.”
Even if the hospital had determined she was too young to decide, they should have gone to Ontario’s Consent and Capacity Board to resolve the dispute, he said.
Back at Six Nations, meanwhile, Ancestral Voices employee Hayley Doxtater said aboriginal remedies are becoming increasingly popular. She pointed to a cancer treatment — a collection of herbs including slippery elm and turkey rhubarb root * — that she said one customer has repeatedly traveled an hour from Toronto to buy for a sick friend.
“We have people come in here who are so happy that something works,” she said. “They’ll say ‘That stuff is amazing.’ “
Right?
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