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Sunday, September 14, 2014

Doing what you have to do! Saving Ashya.



The Medical Establishment is Goliath


Choosing to fight the medical establishment is an awesome thing as to have them as your opponent is overwhelming. It is truly a horrible experience. I know because I did it. However, the way you choose to go about it makes all the difference.

Little Ashya is a young boy with a very big problem. His parents felt that the NHS of the U.K. were limited in what they could do, and in fact they might have effectively dealth with the original problem, but that they most probably would have caused an even worse permanent result due to collateral side-effect damage.

The parents were desperate. Do you simply stand back and wait while the system carries on to the inevitable, or do you spring into action to seek a better option even though the hospital will not give you assistance to do so?

The problem with fighting the medical establishment is that the medical personnel are the ones who have put in the time on their studies; they have made the personal sacrifices and run up huge outstanding loans, and they have made the oath to do no harm. On the basis of that alone we must assume that they intend the best outcome for the patient, yet time and again they bury their mistakes. It's called practising medicine for good reason. The human body is so complex that the practise of medicine is not yet a precise science.

In the pursuit of finding a better option for their son, their travels brought them to Spain to liquidate some property to get money. While they were here, the Spanish police acted on a warant issued by the public prosecutions office in the U.K. The parents were arrested in Malaga and taken to Madrid and locked up for three days. They were travelling with Ashya and all five of his brothers and sisters. Ashya wa placed in the care of an hospital while his parents were taken away. How terrifying must that have been for him.

It has been reported that the oldest of the children was fifteen, and that he was put in charge of looking after his siblings. I sincerely hope that was not the case because at age fifteen he would not have been old enough to legally discharge that responsibility.

Finally common sense prevailed and the parents were set free and off they went to Prague where they were promised a better outcome. We will see.

There are a lot of people who stood in the way of these very caring and loving parents in obtaining the best possible treatment, in their opinion, for their son. They may have got it wrong, but in any event it does bring into very sharp review a parent's rights in medical emergencies.

This is an ethical and a moral quagmire, but one in which we all have an opinion. So far,in this case the authorities are on the losing side in the court of public opinion.

Copyright (c) 2014 Eugene Carmichael