The Scoop: Our bodies should be our business
Through rain or sleet or snow, this column must come through. I don’t want to step on the toes of the postal service, but I’m here to tell you I’m not like the school system. I come to work even if there is a puddle of water somewhere in a dark corner of the county.
That said, I must admit I had to use my windshield wipers on the way to the Standard yesterday. I called up here to see if I still had to come to work through the adverse conditions and found out I did. Bummer.
What I think should happen is the school system should reclassify its 13 inclement weather days. The school system should call them “I don’t want to go to school days.”
That would accomplish two goals: 1) It would be a more accurate title, and 2) it would prevent me from making fun of our school system for not going to school because of rain on a day when it doesn’t even rain.
But that’s enough about our schools because what I really wanted to talk about was a recent court dispute in Michigan concerning a 2-year-old girl with a terrible brain tumor. Her parents don’t want the girl to have surgery and instead want to treat the disease with what we call “alternative medicine” known as homeopathy.
The state of Michigan, however, wants to force the parents to make the girl undergo surgery. This surgery might not be such a bad idea if the girl didn’t have a 70 to 80 percent chance of either dying on the operating table or emerging with severe complications such as complete paralysis.
Before I go any further, let’s forget that we’re talking about some 2-year-old in Michigan that none of us even knows. Let’s say that it’s you who had a brain tumor the size of a walnut and didn’t want to have surgery. Do you think it’s fair for state prosecutors to take you to court in order to force you to have surgery? Certainly not.
I could halfway understand the argument if doctors were claiming they could remove the tumor without incident. I could maybe see their argument if doctors were claiming the child could live a healthy, normal lifestyle after surgery.
But that’s not the case. What doctors are saying is the girl will most likely die during the operation. If she doesn’t die, she could very well be a vegetable. And prosecutors are filing papers to force the parents to have the surgery done anyway.
What is this country coming to? We can hardly execute a convicted killer, but we can roll the dice when the life of a 2-year-old girl is in the balance.
Truth be told, the parents will probably not enjoy more favorable results with homeopathic medicine. The aggravating thing is they are being told what to do by a government that can’t seem to find its nose with both hands.
Let’s not hide what’s happening here. Government officials are trying to force a girl to have surgery. Is this not coloring outside the lines just a bit?
I fully realize that such disputes have occurred from time to time throughout the country, and judges have more often than not ruled that parents cannot withhold life-saving medical care from their children.
The difference in this case is this child could very well receive life-ending medical care. The state could force her to have a procedure which kills her. Then wouldn’t prosecutors feel just great.
I’m all for establishing laws and enacting justice, but I can’t see where state officials are going with this case. The only thing I see is a dangerous precedent being set. It’s a precedent I wouldn’t appreciate if the government forced me to have surgery that would more than likely kill me.
(James Clark is editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)