A Perth court has ordered a six-year-old boy be given chemotherapy for a brain tumour after his parents refused because they don’t want him to become a “lab rat”.
Legal action was made against the parents – Angela Kiszko and Adrian Strachan – by a doctor from Princess Margaret Hospital after they denied the treatment for their son Oshin.
According to The West Australian, the parents want palliative care for Oshin so the family can spend quality time together. Ms Kiszo believes chemotherapy is “toxic hell”, as she watched her mother and stepmother die from cancer.
She told the court: “The children are not really alive, they are completely drugged and exhausted and on the verge of death.”
The court heard that if Oshin – who had surgery last year – doesn’t get treatment, he could die within months.
He has a been given a 30% chance of survival for the next five years if he has the chemo, and if he combines that with radiotherapy, that number will go up to 50%.
Oshin with his parents and sisters
Family Court chief justice Stephen Thackray said that while the parents believe what they’re doing is right, the possibility of a long-term cure “is the matter that most heavily must weigh in the decision”.
“One other matter that I think ought to be given weight is that the uncontested medical evidence and great majority of other parents faced with a similar decision would opt for the intervention that the hospital proposes,” he said.
As ordered by Justice Thackray, treatment will start soon after Oshin’s upcoming birthday.
He has also banned the parents from trying to take their son out of the country.
