1. God forbid, if your child had cancer what would you be willing to do/try for them?
2. Should society allow you to do it?
Here's the story: Adam Koessler: facing jail for giving dying daughter cannabis oil.
Here's the facts:
- 2 year old daughter has stage 4 cancer
- Adam gave his daughter a regiment of cannabis oil
- Adam says he daughter enjoyed a improvement of symptoms and a reduction of pain
- Adam has been arrested and can no longer see his daughter as a condition of release from jail
As things got worse he got more desperate. Someplace he learned about the medicinal use of cannabis oil and success that some patients were having with it. When a man is in a fight for his kids life and losing he don't accept the inevitable. He fights harder. He try's every trick in the book. If those don't work you get anther book. You keep fighting.
"Try a spoonful of this sweetheart" he said. "I don't want any more medicine daddy" she pleads, "It tastes bad". "I know honey, maybe this one will be different", he says in the quiet voice men hope reassures their children. She takes her spoonful. She seems to get a little better and according to the story she tells her dad that her tummy doesn't hurt.
IF and I mean IF making her tummy seem to hurt a little less is all the damn good that oil did, then let her dad give it to her. What the hell are they thinking in Australia? Are they really afraid that a two-year old who has a 50% chance of seeing three is going to get hooked on pot? Do they think the kid's dad is trying to get her addicted to drugs? She already is taking some of the most power and dangerous drugs we have because of the cancer. Their worried about cannabis oil.
What's the worst that could happen? She is already dying. I don't know if a regiment of cannabis does any good or not. I really don't know, I wish I did. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a cannabis activist either. What I am is man who loves his children. Let Adam give his daughter the oil. At this point what is it hurting? For crying out loud if she can't have the oil, what do you hope to gain by not letting her have her daddy as she lies dying?
Daddy has to be kept away because he believes the oil was working. Maybe it was. Probably he did see some improvement in her condition. Adam is in a fight for his daughters life and he isn't going to stop trying. He goes to court again next Tuesday.
This is the problem with "zero tolerance" laws and policies -- they make no exceptions for non-standard cases which inevitably arise, and for which common sense says there should be no charges filed.
ReplyDeleteThere are exceptions to laws against killing, called "self-defense".
There are exceptions to laws against assault, called "castle doctrine".
There are exceptions to laws against trespass, called "privileged entry".
There should also be exceptions to drug laws for situations such as this.
In the US, federal marijuana law does have an exception for medicinal research, but the conditions under which it must be conducted are so restrictive (and expensive) that few drug companies are willing to tackle them. I don't know if Australia has anything similar, but that would be one way to address it: initiate a pilot program, under a doctor's care, to provide the girl this experimental treatment.
As for the initial questions:
1. God forbid, if your child had cancer what would you be willing to do/try for them?
Anything that did not unreasonably violate the rights of others. For example, if a treatment involved an extract from a particular wildflower growing only on somebody else's property, and the owner was too stingy to even sell some of it, I would trespass to get some anyway. But if it involved robbing him at gunpoint for cash to pay a drug company, I would not.
2. Should society allow you to do it?
If it did not violate the rights of anyone else, yes. But in the case of the trespass above, I should be held accountable by society if the owner decides to sue. Refer back to your post about the cop who bought groceries for the shoplifting woman -- that is how society should ideally respond, however.
BTW, they apparently fixed the issue with the "robot check" -- I can now click on the confirmation box, and am no longer confronted with the Captcha check every time.
ReplyDeleteMuch, much better.
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EDIT:
Oops, spoke too soon. Got the Captcha on this comment, went back and edited it before final Publish.
When my FIL had to spend the last two months of his own father's life watching him in serious pain from end stage bone cancer, knowing that thanks to the Feds drug policies his dad could not be given any more than the recommended dosages, it just ripped his heart out.
ReplyDeleteDr. Mengele had nothing on the medical profession of today. He was a ghoul yes, but the medical profession's legally allowed ghouls are even worse IMO.
I feel deeply for that poor father having to watch his baby girl go through that hell. As bad as her's is, I guarantee you that his is much worse, because life is going against every major rule of the Dad playbook.
I used to think that Australia had commonsense that the rest of the world lacked. Now compare the situation of how it is okay to mess up a child by letting a woman who became outwardly a man, yet she gave birth to a baby a year ago, to this poor dad who is only trying to ease his baby's misery.
The world's heart has totally flipped on its axis.
few drug companies are willing to tackle them.
ReplyDeleteThis is by design. Drug companies have a large profit incentive to keep inexpensive solutions to medical conditions unavailable. Consider the situation with vitamin supplements. A company can't patent a substance found in nature. There are a limited number of companies out there that are willing to do the research (because once they do everyone else can copy the product) to establish pharmaceutical grade supplements and design guidelines for medical use. Yet we know that adding supplements to improves health and can reverse some medical conditions.
Cannabis oil is an extraction from (I assume) the seeds of the marijuana plant. Mankind developed the technique of pressing seeds for oil and purifying it thousands of years ago. You can't patent the plant, the pressing process, or any of the steps that would allow a company to profit from a monopoly. Anyone with the interest in making and marketing the product could and that would drive the profits down. That's why they do what they can to keep "alternative medicine" off the market, it competes with patented medicine.
Susan,
ReplyDeleteI've lost too many people who are dear to me to cancer.
As a disease, cancer has a progression of onset and severity that we understand fairly well. Since we understand that process of progression and can determine if a therapy is "working" or not. If one therapy isn't working let the person with cancer pick a different one. Maybe they pick right, maybe not, but the life they are fighting for is their own. How to fight should be their decision.
I feel the same about end of life pain management. Let the dying person determine how much pain killer they want. So what if they are addicted to it. The cancer will get them before they wreck their life as a dope fiend. Besides if they are able to legally purchase the drugs by prescription, controlling dosage and managing the treatment regiment isn't going to produce the undesirable effects of recreational addiction.
The other issue that comes up is the unintentional overdose and death. This is possible and nobody wants that for their loved ones. If grandpa's pain is so bad that he hits the button one time too many for morphine and the extra shot is too much for his system to handle in his weakened state, maybe his time was up.
I'm against managed end of life care where government policy ends a persons life. I hate even the suggestion of it. The sick person and the doctor should make the call on pain meds, not the government.
Right now, my hubby is acting as caretaker for his father, who happens to have recently hit the hospice care level of his diseases.
ReplyDeleteHe has the Big A, colonized mrsa, lymphoma, serious heart blockage, and rheumatism really bad in his left hand.
Hubby's dad is still too lucid to go into the memory unit for his alzheimers, so he is staying in the apartment at the care facility with his parents to help out with the round the clock care. It has been just awful watching an extremely vibrant and healthy man taken down so horribly by all this illness.
What has been really bad is while my hubby has been going through this, his 2 siblings have been making his life absolutely miserable. That has been his life for about 15 months now, and mine too as I witness his efforts. Thank God for emails.
So when I tell you that I appreciate your blog Res, I really do. It has been a source of calm and sanity, and a lot of chuckles.
Susan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind words. I am grateful to be a little escape in your day. I am deeply saddened that you and your husband are facing the pain of watching his father go down this road. You have my good wishes for your family and my prayers to God for your edification and strength.
Thanks Res. As bad as it is getting out there in the world of the internet, I have narrowed down my little reading sanctuaries to you, Nate and VD, along with Lucianne.com and some of Breitbart.
ReplyDeleteBut even then, sometimes the Breitbart just has too much high drama after awhile. So I have been poking around in the links list of you guys for some sanity that isn't full of trollish behavior. One thing I will say for VD is that his trolls are a source of amusement sometimes.