the Kristen LaBrie case in the USA

[empirestateofmind]

A sad story here about a mother in the US who withheld cancer treatment from her son. He died and she has been found guilty of attempted murder.

How much treatment is enough? Can parents ever say enough is enough? Should they be prosecuted?

I don't know about how the treatment would be funded in the US. Lots of families do not have health insurance. I wonder could you be prosecuted if you could not afford to pay for treatment?

How horrible!

And what a slippery slope it seems to be to prosecute for this kind of thing. It is of course hard to judge without knowing the full story but like you say how much treatment is enough?

its a sad fact of life, children sometimes dont survive despite our best efforts. I think parents should be able to say enough is enough, after all if we purely preserve life at all costs and ignore quality of life then whats the point?

ive never heard of this case before so i dont know if theres other issues around general neglect or abuse but it does appear that the mum was faced with the choice of medicate, watch them suffer and they might survive or dont medicate and they wont survive....not an easy choice.

in a system where health care has to be paid for at what point do you say its a criminal offence not to spend the money the provider is telling you you have to?...do you section an adult for choosing not to take the same treatment in order to safeguard their well being? after all an adult who chooses not to take life saving treatment must be a risk to themselves surley!

clearly im not saying neglect and abuse of children is ever acceptable but i think the parent reserves the right to choose for them in the same way they would for themselves

The article doesn't mention whether it was the first or second or third round of chemo, how advanced his cancer was, what were his chances of survival.

It's also odd that the doctors didn't step in when they realised she wasn't giving her son the meds.

Tbh, if her son had a good chance of beating the disease I would say that it is right that she was found guilty of attempted murder.

There are also other factors, though: his disability and her depression- how much did they influence her?

Poor kid

She was in the best position to assess his quality of life, and the effect of the chemo on him.

It is a heartbreaking story.

I wonder what support she had, whether she had respite. Did she have other children to support? And where was the father- was he taking responsibility and helping?

I do wonder about why the doctors didn't step in and why he wasn't take into care if the doctors were not happy with how his mother was dealing with things.

I have seen at first hand the stress of having a disabled child in the family brings. It is relentless and there is no end in sight. It takes saints to keep going and giving without having a break down at some point however much they love their child.

I will look out to see what sentence she is given. I do hope the judge shows pity on her and she doesn't spend long in prison.

This is such a tragic story - these paragraphs leapt out at me as describing something particularly tough

Boston attorney J.W. Carney Jr. told the Boston Globe that LaBrie's case should also have zeroed in on the role played by LaBrie's doctors, questioning why they didn't get involved as soon as it was clear that LaBrie was not complying with the treatment regimen.

"It can be so overwhelming for a single parent to deal with a child who is autistic, nonverbal, and developmentally delayed," said Carney. "It is cruel to add to that burden a diagnosis of cancer and a requirement that the mom administer medicine that will cause the child even more pain."

There is also the problem of this though (from another article):

"In October 2006, 9-year-old Jeremy was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin?s lymphoma, but doctors gave him an 85 percent to 90 percent chance of recovery, MacDougall said during the arraignment in 2009. Large doses of chemotherapy were given to the boy in the hospital, and his cancer went into remission.
His mother was given prescriptions for medications he was to be given at home. During the arraignment, MacDougall said LaBrie repeatedly failed to pick up prescriptions but led doctors to believe she was getting them filled, even asking at one point for a liquid version of the medication because her son was having difficulty swallowing pills.
?Miss LaBrie never expressed any misgivings about the treatment,? MacDougall said."

So he had an 85-90% chance of recovery, and she neglected to give him his meds, lied about it repeatedly. It'd be different, IMO, if he had a much lesser chance of survival and she simply said openly that giving him the meds that made him ill was only prolonging his suffering. But it sounds like that's not the case. She obviously has some mental issues, most likely due to lack of support. The US does not have anywhere near an appropriate level of support for parents of children with autism (or disabilities for that matter). She must have been under an intense amount of pressure to make that type of decision. But while the US needs to make massive strides in support for parents and families, I can't really condone her decision. It does sound like the doctors DID step in once they realised he wasn't getting his meds, but she took care to lie about it for quite some time - by the time they realised it, he had developed leukemia.

Triggles that shows the case in a very different light . I suspect she was coping with all this by herself then if no one at home realised what was happening either. As you say it would seem that there were mental health issues. I wonder why she didn't seek help. Would there really have been no where to turn to?

The US does not have a very good support system in place at all for families with disabled children. One of my best friends from the states has a son that is deaf with CP and epilepsy. She is single parent. She was tormented at work by a few co-workers who were jealous (can you imagine?!?!) because she was allowed to work dayshift as she could not find a carer for shift work due to his disabilities. She was told just to "ignore" them, rather than them being dealt with. She had serious depression set in when her own health deteriorated (cancer, which thankfully with surgery and chemo/radiation therapy was eradicated and has recently had the all clear) and her work didn't want to know, no counselling available to her unless she was literally suicidal (in which case she'd be hospitalised, but who would take care of her son?). I did what I could, but honestly, I was so angry that nothing was available to help her more when she so desperately needed it.

So yes, there may have easily been nowhere for her to turn to. HUUUUUUGE social stigma for mental health issues and time off work for mental issues is time NOT PAID - as their work sickness policies are so different from here and there is no statutory sick pay. Or housing benefit. Or such.