Thursday, July 27, 2006

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

Taking your medicine at the point of a gun

By Jack Phillips

The state of Virginia is threatening Abraham Cherrix, a 16-year-old, with torture — chemotherapy — that he doesn’t want and that his parents do not want for him. His oncologist insists that this is what he needs, despite the fact that a previous series of chemotherapy treatments which supposedly “got it all” actually didn’t. What they did do was leave him so debilitated that his father had to carry him out of the hospital after treatment. He says, “I studied. I did research. I came to the conclusion that chemotherapy was not the route I wanted to take.” Another round at higher doses “would kill me.”

Nevertheless the Virginia Social Services Department, on the complaint of his attending physician, dragged his parents into court, where Judge Jesse E. Demps issued a temporary order finding his parents neglectful for not forcing their child to take more chemotherapy. They now share custody with the Accomack County Department of Social Services. Medical expenses involved with cancer treatments are substantial. Adding legal expenses on top of them is obscene. This family is now in debt to the tune of $100,000!

The Department of Social Services is willing and able to bankrupt this family to satisfy their physician. Furthermore, that department intends to appeal the case to a higher court if they lose, to insure that this family goes deeper into debt. Do we really need this kind of social service? And do we really want physicians to be able to call in the troops to enforce their orders against our judgment of what is best for our children? This case indicates that the mantra, “Doctors know best,” which might have been true in the past, may no longer be valid. Whatever happened to “FIRST, DO NO HARM!”

Unfortunately, there are abused children who need protection, and it is necessary to have something like Social Services to provide this. However, reports that about 100,000 of our children are disappearing without a trace yearly indicates that Social Services is not doing its job. Nevertheless, they find time to harass good people who are trying to do what they think best for their children — for example, the family of Katie Wernecke in Texas, who was forced to live with foster parents and have her immune system disabled with chemotherapy before the court would allow her parents to provide her with immune-system-enhancing vitamin C infusions. A recent Canadian Journal of Medicine reported several cases of cancer cured with vitamin C infusions, which works by reinforcing the immune system so that the body can heal itself as it was designed to do. Disabling Katie’s immune system with chemotherapy before vitamin C infusions was irrational.

These bureaucrats are very aggressive; one of my acquaintances almost lost custody of his six children in Connecticut while driving home through that state because five of them refused to talk to strangers (Social Services personnel) while he was in a hospital making sure that one of them was not seriously ill.

Our servants in Washington, D.C. and in statehouses across the country have woven a cocoon of laws around us to empower their minions, and government employment keeps increasing. There is no constituency for saving money in our government, but there are incentives for spending more. Borrowing money from foreigners to have it misspent by Social Services departments makes no sense. It seems to me that our “servants” need to be informed that this has to stop. At the very least, we need to have freedom of choice in medical care. Getting medical care at the point of a gun is not acceptable. This freedom of choice would have been part of our Constitution if George Washington’s surgeon general had had his way.

There are informed people in this country who believe that chemotherapy is barbaric and that oncologists are jackals among men. While chemotherapy does kill cancer cells, collateral damage to healthy cells and the immune system is substantial. Many successful treatments for cancer have been developed over the years which are far kinder and gentler, but they have been suppressed by the medical establishment. For example, low-dose, whole-body radiation treatments, successfully tested at Harvard Medical School in 1975 and again in 1977, cured non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In more recent times, Dr. Sakamoto ran a similar test in Japan, and about 84 percent of his patients were living 13 years after the treatment. When he himself was diagnosed with colon cancer, after surgery, he gave himself two courses of these treatments and recovered fully with no metasteses. I wonder how many physicians willingly undergo chemotherapy.

After Christopher Bird published his book about Gaston Naessen’s cancer research, and persecution and trial in Canada, many American physicians called him for his suggestions on cancer treatments. According to his notes, he asked why they didn’t want to use the approved therapies that they gave patients on themselves or their loved ones, and they answered that they didn’t work.

We have wasted billions of dollars and years of effort on cancer research with little to show for it. It seems to me that people need to start insisting that they get something more from their government than increasing debt and harassment. Let your representatives know what you think. Your vote is a powerful weapon if used properly. But remember Joseph Stalin’s dictum: “It is not who votes, but who counts the votes that counts.”

The Abraham Cherrix Defense Fund is administered by the R.B.C. Centura Bank at 2422 Princess Anne Road in Virginia Beach, VA 23456, for those who might wish to contribute.


Well said, Mr. Phillips. It's time for We the People to put our collective foot down and tell these jackals in the government to back off and leave families alone.

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