Chemo or child neglect

The child neglect case in Brown County has to be one of the most controversial cases in the history of child neglect cases for the region.

We have parents of a 13-year old boy, Daniel Hauser, arguing he can make his own decisions with regard to chemotherapy cancer treatment that offers a 90 percent chance of surviving his Hodgkins Lymphoma. Without the treatment doctors say, there is a 5 percent survival rate.

Yet, his family and he, are rejecting the chemo. They subscribe instead to mostly diet treatment of the cancer through Nemenhah spiritual type healing. They and their lawyers say it may work better than chemo.

Certainly a tough case for Judge John Rodenburg, a very good judge in my mind.

Representing the family is Mankato attorney Calvin Johnson. You may remember him as the fellow who defended a case of a man saying first milk from cows can cure cancer. That also was an interesting case from, it seems, more than a decade ago.

Odin Dairy farmer Herb Saunders was put on trial in 1995 for practicing medicine without a license, but through two trials, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. The Watonwan County attorney finally dropped the case in 1996.

It was interesting because former Iowa Congressman Berkley Bedell swore he was cured of cancer from Saunder's milk treaments, and according to one report, paid some of Saunders' legal expenses.

The cases are much different because the issue of child neglect and endangerment didn't enter into the Saunders case, but the issue of alternative treatments is the similarity, and certainly that raises questions, at least in the minds of some, about traditional medicine.

What will be difficult for the judge is at what point do parents' decisions on medical care constitute child endangerment? What if Daniel's odds were only 50-50 with chemo?