{"id":28,"date":"2009-05-26T13:19:46","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T13:19:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/05\/13-year-old-daniel-hauser-refusing-chemo-on-religious-grounds-court-orders-treatment.html"},"modified":"2009-05-26T13:19:46","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T13:19:46","slug":"13-year-old-daniel-hauser-refusing-chemo-on-religious-grounds-court-orders-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/05\/13-year-old-daniel-hauser-refusing-chemo-on-religious-grounds-court-orders-treatment.html","title":{"rendered":"13-Year-Old Daniel Hauser Refusing Chemo On Religious Grounds; Court Orders Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"mt-image-left\" height=\"159\" alt=\"daniel_hauser_chemo.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/200\/import\/daniel_hauser_chemo.jpg\" width=\"240\" \/><\/span>Over the past couple of weeks, the news has been filled with headlines about 13-year-old Daniel Hauser, a Minnesota boy diagnosed with Hodgkin&#8217;s lymphoma.&nbsp;Citing religious grounds (the family are members of the <a href=\"http:\/\/nemenhah.org\/\">Nemenhah Band<\/a> of Native Americans, who are proponents of natural healing methods), the boy and his mother began refusing chemotherapy after a single treatment. The Brown County court stepped in and ordered treatment to resume. When he and his mother Colleen lost their court appeal, they went on the run. <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20090525\/ap_on_re_us\/us_forced_chemo\">They returned Monday after a week in hiding to face a custody hearing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The ethical implications of this story are legion. Let&#8217;s start by naming just a few.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Does a minor have a right to refuse medical treatment on <em>any <\/em>grounds, religious or otherwise?<\/li>\n<li>Does a parent have the right to decide to refuse treatment for his or her child on religious grounds?<\/li>\n<li>Does the state have a right to overturn personal choice in either a minor <em>or <\/em>an adult?<\/li>\n<li>Does the state have a right to take custody of a child under these circumstances?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Complicating this story are several factors. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The leader of the Nemenhah Band, the religious organization to which Hauser and his mother belong,&nbsp;apparently leaves room for debate&nbsp;regarding the&nbsp;spiritual requirements&nbsp;of their faith concerning medical treatment. (See Beliefnet&#8217;s&nbsp;Editor-In-Chief Steve Waldman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/does-colleen-hausers-religion.html\">blog post<\/a> on this topic for a thoughtful dissection of the facts.) Yet Daniel, calling the chemo&nbsp;treatment &#8216;toxic&#8217; (and anyone who has ever had chemo won&#8217;t argue the chemicals used are poisons,&nbsp;albeit specifically targeted ones), is refusing to have further treatment, even though Hodgkin&#8217;s is <a href=\"http:\/\/health.nytimes.com\/health\/guides\/disease\/hodgkins-lymphoma\/prognosis.html\">90% curable<\/a> in children when treated with chemo and radiation, and almost always fatal without. He and his mother seem to honestly believe the treatment will kill him, and that, on the contrary,&nbsp;the unproven alternative methods they espouse will cure the cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m a bit biased. One of my childhood friends had this same disease, had the treatment, and 15 years later is the happy, healthy mother of two adorable children. All I can say is I&#8217;m glad she&#8217;s alive. I&#8217;m not a big believer in a nanny state when it comes to adults, but when it comes to kids I think it&#8217;s a different matter&#8211;even (perhaps especially) when religion is involved.&nbsp;The things I believed in when I was 13 in no way resemble the things I believe now, and I&#8217;m glad I have had the opportunity to grow and rethink some of my adolescent &#8216;certainties&#8217;. I&#8217;m not sure that as a teenager <em>anyone <\/em>is able to make a rational choice about their future, and while adults may, if they choose,&nbsp;decide to risk death by flying in the face of conventional medical wisdom&nbsp;and leave their fate in the hands of&nbsp;their faith, it seems insane to me to allow (or force) a child to make that same choice.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also read that Daniel Hauser is illiterate and was home-schooled, and may&nbsp;not be fully able to comprehend the full facts of his medical condition. Surely,&nbsp;more thoughtful heads should intervene in this case&#8211;and have, in the person of the Brown County court system.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Do&nbsp;you agree?<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past couple of weeks, the news has been filled with headlines about 13-year-old Daniel Hauser, a Minnesota boy diagnosed with Hodgkin&#8217;s lymphoma.&nbsp;Citing religious grounds (the family are members of the Nemenhah Band of Native Americans, who are proponents of natural healing methods), the boy and his mother began refusing chemotherapy after a single&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,18,17,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-ethics-religious","category-medical-ethics","category-parenting-responsibility"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>13-Year-Old Daniel Hauser Refusing Chemo On Religious Grounds; Court Orders Treatment - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/05\/13-year-old-daniel-hauser-refusing-chemo-on-religious-grounds-court-orders-treatment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"13-Year-Old Daniel Hauser Refusing Chemo On Religious Grounds; Court Orders Treatment - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over the past couple of weeks, the news has been filled with headlines about 13-year-old Daniel Hauser, a Minnesota boy diagnosed with Hodgkin&#8217;s lymphoma.&nbsp;Citing religious grounds (the family are members of the Nemenhah Band of Native Americans, who are proponents of natural healing methods), the boy and his mother began refusing chemotherapy after a single&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/05\/13-year-old-daniel-hauser-refusing-chemo-on-religious-grounds-court-orders-treatment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-26T13:19:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/files\/import\/daniel_hauser_chemo.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hfields\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"13-Year-Old Daniel Hauser Refusing Chemo On Religious Grounds; 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}