A bitter standoff between the parents of a 12-year-old and Texas social workers and doctors over radiation treatment ended last week on a somber note with a medical report that the girl's Hodgkin's disease, which had seemed to be in remission, had reappeared.
The parents, Michele and Edward Wernecke, lost custody of their daughter Katie a week ago, after opposing radiation therapy as unnecessary given the apparent remission. When the new test results were announced at a hearing in juvenile court, the parents quickly complied and agreed through their lawyers to let doctors set the course of treatment, which could resume in days.
"The Werneckes are devastated," said Daniel Horne, a lawyer for the couple. Horne said they were too distraught to comment.
Michele Wernecke went with a doctor to tell Katie the news before a family gathering under state supervision to celebrate her birthday. She turned 13 on Saturday.
The agreement on treatment
appeared to douse another hot spot in the issues of patients' rights. Coming on the heels of the polarizing right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo, Katie's case raised the provocative question of when parents lose their rights to control a child's medical treatment. Under Texas law, parents may withhold medical treatment from a terminally ill child, but not in lesser situations.
"If the benefits of treatment are clear and clear harm can result from withholding care, ethically, the state has the right to step in," said Robert Klitzman, co-director of the Center for Bioethics at Columbia University.
Allowing a disease to inflict harm, Klitzman said, "is a form of child abuse."
Last week, Michele Wernecke absconded with Katie to forestall the radiation treatments that the parents -- and Katie herself, in a family video -- said risked doing her more harm than good, because her cancer was in remission. The flight set off a hunt by county law officers, who found the mother and daughter at a relative's farm.
The mother was arrested, charged with endangering a minor and jailed for 48 hours before being released on US$50,000 bail. Katie was put in foster care, and the family's three other children, aged 2, 5 and 14, were placed in a children's home.
On Friday morning, Katie's siblings were returned to the parents under a judge's order, and the charges against their mother have been dropped. For now, though, Katie is to remain in the custody of the state's Children's Protective Services.
"Given the opportunity to abscond with the child, they took it," said Judge Carl Lewis, who handles juvenile cases for Nueces County. But Lewis agreed to allow the family ample visiting rights, and the lawyer for the children's agency, Thomas Stuckey, said Katie would be returned to the family as soon as possible.
According to a letter given to the Werneckes' lawyers, the Department of Family and Protective Services acted in part on a complaint on May 26 by one of Katie's physicians, Nejemie Alter, who is part of the pediatric oncology-hematology department at Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi.
Alter stated that he had been treating the girl since the disease was diagnosed in January. Despite three opinions that Katie needs radiation to follow her chemotherapy, Alter wrote, "The parents are still refusing to continue the recommended treatment."
RSS