The family of a Virginia boy who has refused conventional medical treatment for cancer reached a settlement Wednesday with state officials, agreeing that he will see a new doctor while continuing his alternative therapy.
The compromise means that Starchild Abraham Cherrix, 16, will not have to undergo chemotherapy against his will, as a judge had ordered him to do. Officials in Accomack County, Va., had accused Abraham’s parents of medical neglect for allowing him to seek an alternative treatment gleaned from a clinic in Mexico.
Under the settlement, reached on the day the dispute was scheduled to go to trial, Abraham will be permitted to see a new oncologist who uses alternative therapies emphasizing nutrition, said John Stepanovich, an attorney for the family. Abraham may be treated with radiation but will also continue the therapy from Mexico that triggered the dispute.
“It’s a wonderful resolution. They wanted to force us back to the old doctors and force us back into chemotherapy,” Stepanovich said. “Now, we can move from the courtrooms to the treatment rooms, where this battle really needs to be fought.”
Officials from the Accomack County Department of Social Services had brought the charges of medical neglect but agreed to Wednesday’s settlement.
The dispute had attracted national attention and pitted parental rights against the government’s obligation to protect a child’s health. Some had compared the case to that of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose medical care also led to multiple court decisions and high-profile political involvement.
Under U.S. Supreme Court and state court decisions, legal and medical experts have said, parents are usually allowed to make medical decisions for their children. But some states, including Virginia, allow courts to override parental decisions if the child’s health is endangered.
That did not happen in Abraham’s case, said Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Robert McDonnell, who filed legal briefs in the case and announced Wednesday’s settlement. “Parental responsibility for the care, control and custody of children has long been viewed as a fundamental constitutional right, and is a foundational belief of all Virginians,” McDonnell said. “This is the kind of difficult personal decision that the state must allow parents to make, absent a clear case of neglect.”
Abraham was diagnosed last August with Hodgkin’s disease after a mass was found on his neck. A pediatric oncologist at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, Va., recommended chemotherapy for the previously healthy teenager and then, if needed, radiation.
Associated Press
Joined by his mother, Rose (left), Starchild Abraham Cherrix hugs a family friend, Sharon Smith, outside the courthouse in Accomac, Va., Wednesday.
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