Little boy has been removed from hospital by his parents

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He is very sick, needs constant treatment. His parents have taken him to France.

I don't understand why the hospital didn't notice or alert the police for 6 hours.

The police won't comment on the parents being Jehovah's Witnesses.

It sounds wrong when the statement said he was removed without consent. The child is theirs, should be allowed to be in charge of him, but of course it is he that will lose his life if not cared for and that isn't in his best interests necessarily.

I hope he is found and can be cured.

I hope his parents are released ASAP to be by his side.

I think the parents will agree to voluntary extradition to speed things up.

I really hope a benefactor comes forward to fund treatment and this whole fandango has a positive result in the end.

Mrs Dv I accused the parents of nothing. I don't know them. I spoke of parents generally. Many are brilliant, some are not.

Wet - Every single hospital in the land that treats children will have a policy detailing actions to take if children are withdrawn from hospital. The hospital has to adhere to that policy, they can't make exceptions depending on how well they know the parents or how nice they seem.

Themeaning I would be interested in those figures also, along with comparisions on the treatment the parents went to Spain for.

This is such a sad case. I hope the parents get to provide their son with the treatment they want to try. Everyone needs to walk in their shoes before they judge.the parents are desperate to save their sons life and desperation is a very powerful emotion.

Watch the father's 10 minute video scrolling down on this link www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ashya-king-missing-latest-updates-4132444 about why they took their child as they wanted him to have proton beam treatment which will be available to the parents in Birmingham in 2 years when the NHS sets up the new arrangement.

Apparently the father says the operation was 100% successful, great doctors. Father then offered to sell his property to have the proton beam treatment. A new NHS specialists threatened to take child away if the parents disputed their path of chemo and radiotherapy. The parents say the police and authorities have stopped the steps the parents could have done to raise the money. The father says they have everything there the child needs.
He says the two consultants even disagreed - one said the Milan protocol should be followed and the other said it was not in force any more.

The parents have now been arrested. It is dreadful. It really is. Parents should be allowed to try these things.

We need much more clarity on when a parent may choose through an informed choice what is done to the child. He was told vomiting was the side effects of chemo and radiation but in fact there is also a risk as we all know of more cancers, mental impact stunting and all the rest. They were going to put 56 (very strong) on the brain. They were stopping him getting the money together to get to the Czech republic for the treatment.

It sounds like a made up reason. But they did say it could be plugged in, they just emphasised the fact that the actual battery was going to die. So they didn't lie, just put the facts across all skewed so if you didn't read between the lines and think 'well, clearly they'll just plug it in then' you'd think they were starving him.

None of this story actually surprises me at all. They clearly only mentioned they were JW to make people think they were denying him treatment. They actually even said that the fact they were JW had no impact on his treatment, but people still were in uproar over nothing.

To be honest, I hope those people are suitably ashamed of themselves, especially the original poster here.

But they will probably not be nice enough to back down if they weren't nice enough to actually read what facts they saw before slating parents with a very sick child. If you are nice enough to back down, apologise and wait for the facts from now on, I'm sorry and good on you.

I don't think I would have done what these parents did, I doubt I'd have the courage, or the money. I doubt I'd be intelligent enough to decipher all the studies either. So shame on me.

Oops, sorry it's fab, I didn't read your posts because for some reason on the new site it only highlighted them on the first page, so when I did a scan to see if you'd taken it back they didn't show up.

My fault. Sorry.

Best not to believe anything you hear on the news until you've thoroughly researched everything they say there. Most of it is twisted or made up unfortunately

'They clearly only mentioned they were JW to..."

I'm not sure the authorities out that into the public domain. It's in none of the prepared statements, but was confirmed in response to a press question and each time with a disclaimer that there was no reason to thinkthat's s in any way connected to the incident. The press will examine social media (which we know family members used), and that the press were door stepping neighbours, and that must have added a lot to the story.

They did add a disclaimer, but they also said the feeding machine could be plugged in. It didn't stop people being in uproar, the press know this, they know how people react. Just as I knew as soon as I saw it that people wouldn't listen to the disclaimer. It's very sad.

Also, I am inclined to believe what the father was saying because he mentioned all the doctors names, he is an intelligent man if he has done all this research himself, therefor it's obvious he knows that if he makes up a load of bollocks about what the doctor said and then used his name he could be sued for slander.

What the press did was present the facts, but sort of twisted them around so some people wouldn't understand and cause uproar.

BTW, Milan Protocol has not been discredited. Proton Beam therapy is also used by NHS, and they fund treatment overseas (until the opening of centres providing it in UK).

What now? If the charge is neglect-and the child hasn't been neglected, then surely there is no need to hold them? I'm not good on how these processes work.

Also, how do we as the public complain about the way this has been handled? I am sure a lot of people are disgusted. I am sure both the press and the hospital will have clever communications people now who are crafting some Weasley words which will make them seem like the caring state here. I will of course wait and see what happens prior to making a complaint as we probably haven't yet had all the information on the situation.

Finally, does anyone know if there is a donation page anywhere? I can't give much- but I'd like to help the child receive this treatment.

As they went overseas for proton beam therapy, then they have surely identified the hospital offering it and who will admit him, have an admissions date and an agreement in place about how/when they will pay. So I think they should be allowed to continue with that plan.

If for some reason they do not have appointments and travelled hoping something would turn up, then he's probably better off back in UK.

I imagine the hospital will be doing a massive offensive to ensure they can back up their heavy handed approach to this family during his time in the hospital...including threatening them with a court order.

Shameful 'care'

Well, they had to leave, because if they started the arrangements first, and the hospital wrote to his current doctor, as they would, then the doctor would carry out his threat, get a court order and they wouldn't be able to see their son.

The father explained that.

I know we don't have all the facts, and never will, but if the following facts were true - what rights would the parents have?

• They disagree with their child's consultant
• The consultants disagree with each other
• There isn't a court order in place
• They (the parents) have allowed the surgery to go ahead
• There is a legal alternative treatment which that consultant will not consider
• The consultant is threatening the parents with an order if they don't permit something - something the consultants can't even agree on
• The treatment is legal but not NHS funded in their postcode, the family are willing to sell their home & fundraise to pay for the treatment

WHY can't the parents choose to have legal treatment elsewhere?

I hope they can all be together today. Whatever the rights and wrongs of either side there is a little boy here who needs his parents, even if that means (which I don't think it should) they put them all together in a secure hospital room with security

The BBC said there was a petition set up about this issue. Does anyone have a link to it?

Well, they had to leave, because if they started the arrangements first, and the hospital wrote to his current doctor, as they would, then the doctor would carry out his threat, get a court order and they wouldn't be able to see their son.

The father explained that.

That's one of the things that make me uneasy about the father's account. Because there is obviously absolutely no way that the hospital would get a court order on that basis, and I find it highly unlikely that the doctor would have made that threat knowing that the father only has to ring a lawyer to find out the truth. So I think we have to be as cautious about accepting the father's version as we are about the hospital.

It is disgusting that those parents have been arrested. An ill child - who needs the comfort of a parent's embrace - has been removed from his parents and chucked in a foreign hospital while his parents are in custody.

Also disgusting were the JW slurs. I am NOT a JW so no axe to grind here but it is SO lazy that people were hinting that the parents were backward in their beliefs and wanting to deny treatment for religious reasons when exactly the opposite is true.

Whoever issued that international arrest warrant should hang their heads in shame, they really should. Hopefully someone in this whole affair will see sense and release the parents to be with their son.

I'm baffled as to why this story - which is essentially a non-story - has been headline news for the past few days. As some people, like MrsDeVere, predicted earlier in the thread, they have been feeding the little boy, so all that stuff about him being about to die was essentially scaremongering and trying to demonise the poor parents.

I don't know the rights and wrongs of the debate about his treatment, but really this is something that surely can and should be resolved through conversation between the parents and doctors, not by demonising and then arresting (ffs) parents who are just trying to do the best for their child.

Well, they probably could you know. They don't half lie sometimes, especially when being questioned a lot.

My experience- DS was given a brain scan in 2011, neurologist said it was clear.

2014, DSs care transferred to another neurologist due to his old one retiring, she looked back over his case, sent a letter saying "as x was found, I now want to do y"

I rang the general paed obviously upset and said "what does she mean x was found? I was told it was clear"

Paed: "nothing new was found, lie lie lie blah blah blah"

Me: " I know something new was found it says it here and I have both letters, I don't care that it wasn't found before anymore, I only want to know what it means for DS and where we go from here"

Paeds attitude changed instantly as soon as he realised I didn't care about making complaints and suing.

If this doctor did think that the parents were going to make a complaint, he may have made this threat. He could back it up as well because they said they don't want him to have the radiation that would destroy their child's brain.

hackmum I've been thinking about this. The press were going to get a whipping boy either way - either the parents were evil or the hospital was in the wrong so they get to kick the NHS. And the current news agenda is driven by Ukraine, ISIS, Ebola - maybe editors decided they needed something of more local interest to get audiences engaged?