The full story of Jim and Donna Navarro’s unsuccessful struggle to get their four-year-old son, Thomas’ cancer treated by anything other than chemotherapy is now quite well known in the US and is told in a lengthy interview and on a documentary film, both available from the Dr Mercola site. To quote Dr Mercola’s ‘story at a glance’:
In the US, parents, shockingly can lose their children if they refuse conventional cancer therapy. Child Protective Services (CPS) are routinely called in to charge parents who want a ‘second opinion’ – perhaps to investigate alternative therapies, charging them with child abuse and neglect when refusing conventional treatment.
In this case, four-year-old Thomas had been treated, successfully, with a Tibetan remedy before his hospital consultants insisted that he undergo chemotherapy. Eventually, after prolonged and unsuccessful chemotherapy, his parents got FDA approval to send him to Dr Stanislaw Burzynski but, although during the seven months of his treatment at the Burzynski clinic, Thomas’ tumours had reduced by 33%, he died in December 2001 of Respiratory failure due to chronic toxicity of chemotherapy.
To add insult to injury, not only had conventional treatment failed to save Thomas, but thanks to their huge cost and the ‘cut off’ policy of US medical insurers for cancer, by the time Thomas died the Navarros were bankcrupt and had to rely on the generosity of a local funeral home who head heard their story and donated the entire funeral costs.
Shocking, depressing, but important, reading.