Victory for Parental Rights: State Agrees to End Stand-Off with Amish Family over Forced Health Care Official who had sought to take family’s daughter from home and force chemotherapy on her, despite parent’s earnest objections and Health Care Freedom Amendment, resigns as guardian Family will continue to pursue alternative treatment
A relative says an Ohio Amish girl diagnosed with leukemia continues natural treatments while hiding with her parents amid a legal case over whether she'll be forced to resume chemotherapy. Doctors fought the family's decision to end chemotherapy, saying Sarah Hershberger would die without it. Her grandfather tells the Akron Beacon Journal that Sarah recently celebrated her 11th birthday and seems vibrant and healthy. Isaac Keim says blood and imaging tests showed the cancer is gone. The family's attorney says it fled home in northeast Ohio's Medina County, leaving the country at one point to avoid having to resume chemotherapy treatments. A state appeals court has appointed a guardian to take over Sarah's medical decisions. Keim says the family returned to the U.S. but remains in hiding.
Why did Akron Children's Hospital spend so much time and resources to prosecute this Amish family, trying to force a 10-year old to receive chemotherapy that neither she nor her family wanted, even after multiple judges ruled custody of the 10-year old to her parents, multiple times? What motivated this hospital to seek out a different judge to finally award custody of this 10-year old child to their hospital attorney, forcing the family to flee the country? The family has spoken out and given their side of the story, which the mainstream media apparently has no interest in covering.
Earlier this month we published the story of 10-year old Sarah Hershberger, an Amish girl in Ohio, and how her parents took her off of toxic chemo therapy. The courts in Ohio overturned a previous judge's ruling on her case and awarded custody of the girl to the hospital's attorney, who is also a nurse. The hospital was claiming that Sarah's life was in danger if she did not continue with the chemo therapy, but her parents were claiming that Sarah was doing better, and that the chemo therapy was actually killing her. Now, David Michael of The Journal of Natural Food and Health is reporting that the Amish girl was part of an experiment of new drugs, and that the hospital's motivation for getting custody of the girl and having her continue her therapy was because the hospital stood to lose substantial funding for ending the drug trial too soon. When you consider also the potential billions of dollars a pharmaceutical company can potentially make from a new cancer drug, it is easy to understand the hospital's motivation to try and get custody of this child and have her continue the treatment, whether she needed it or not. Michael has interviewed the parents, who reportedly left the country shortly before the court decision in early October, and where their daughter received alternative cancer treatment which is approved in Europe and other places, but banned in the U.S. As a result, their daughter Sarah has now been declared "cancer-free," verified through laboratory tests. I have been in contact with one of the family members as well, who has confirmed that the information Michael is reporting is "100% accurate." Akron Children’s Hospital has testified in court that Sarah would die without chemo therapy. The Hershbergers would now like to return to the U.S. and be rejoined with their other 6 children, but they believe there is a warrant out for their arrest and that they will lose their daughter. They are raising funds to mount a legal challenge.
