to all GN's living in France 4 year old boy missing

I suspect that the child is so brain damaged, all chaemo would do is arrest the process.
It would not restore damaged brain tissue!

Galen would a high doze of chemo help? That is what the consultants concerned were insisting on giving.

If you look at the photos of this child
He is not focussing on anyone:- I suspect he is blind
He is not being responsive
He has to be tube fed
He appears to be wearing a nappy. Ie incontinent.
What good would photo beam do him?
It would not repair removed or damaged brain tissue.

I don't understand why a parent or guardian is required to sign consent forms for a child's treatment if they are not allowed to withhold their consent.

I can see that if it was thought that the parents were behaving irrationally or neglectfully or had previously contributed to a child's worsening state of health, then some sort of Order would have to be sought to prevent them withholding consent. But this doesn't appear to be the case here, and there is no indication that the hospital was in the process of seeking such an Order.

The original reports stated that it was unlikely that the parents could be deemed to have committed an offence. Then an arrest warrant was issued on the grounds of "neglect". From the video the father made, it didn't seem as if the child was being neglected and it seems to me that this matter has been very insensitively handled.

As a non-medical person perhaps it's unfair to be judgmental, but if the prognosis is that the little boy is terminally ill or that the treatment proposed will leave him with significant brain damage, surely the parents should have the right to seek treatment somewhere else in the hope that it may produce a better outcome? Is it right that they should be treated like criminals and separated from their family at this terrible time?

I have always felt that the problem here was a breakdown in communication and a difficulty for the parents of accepting the situation, which is entirely understandable - heaven knows how I would feel in that situation. I know that doctors here would organise the best possible treatment where that is thought to have a possibility of improvement.

Whilst having enormous sympathy with the parents I do not think it has helped to drag the poor wee lad round Europe.

And I am very sad at the heavy-handed involvement of the law enforcement agencies in an essentially private tragedy.

Yes, Galen. Poor family. I do not think that Southampton covered itself with glory, threatening the parents with not being able to see Ashya.

When anyone you love is given a diagnosis of brain cancer, your own brain is not working properly. You do not hear everything that you are being told. In most cases, even now, it's a death sentence.

Less than 5% of money raised for cancer research goes on brain cancer.

Have to go out for a walk now.

It sounds as though he's agreeing with me. Ie. if it would have helped it would have been funded and arranged

nhap.org/dr-clive-peedell-on-proton-beam-therapy-and-the-ashya-king-case-2/

Dr Peedell is a consultant oncologist and the chair of the NHA party.

Galen, when Lansley was health secretary, he promised two proton beam machines, one for London and the other for Manchester hospitals.
They obviously haven't been delivered yet.
In Newcastle's Bobby Robson centre, they are researching on a different sort of radiotherapy for childhood brain tumours which targets the tumour and not the surrounding tissue. This is what the family want.
Having seen what ordinary radiotherapy did to my husband, our sons would not want it for any members of their families. He was better for a couple of weeks, but talking faster than he had for years. Then his memory deteriorated, his reactions and actions deteriorated, and he died a month later. This is because the radiotherapy destroys healthy brain tissue along with the tumour, just what the boy's parents are worried about.

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/30/ashya-brain-tumour-found-parents-spain

I put this on earlier. It has a ten minute clip from the father, unlike the BBC two minute one. It explains in more detail.

Galen, the reason they went via Spain was to put their holiday home in the hands of agents to sell it to raise the money for treatment. Now they have been banned from doing that.

There is a Paypal account on the clip for anyone who wishes to donate.

I didn't think that the proton beam was proved to have been successful in this type of Ca. It has been used for prostate Ca. I'm afraid this is a case of clutching at straws. The hospital they wre aiming for was checkoslavakia, so why go via Spain? I suspect the Ca is terminal and no treatment would help but the parents wony accept it.
If the proton beam therapy was likely to work I am sure the medical staff at Soton would have facilitated the treatment.
There is at least one (non NHS) unit in England.

Southampton Hospital cannot comment. They would be breaching confidentiality if they discussed further. (yes I know they could be said to have breached it to some extent already but that was viewed as an emergency) It's not going to happen.
We can all have our opinion about the video etc but none of us know the details. It would not be possible for another hospital to tell the parents whether or not any treatment would benefit their son, unless they had all the medical records - lab results, MRIs etc. from Southampton.
Unfortunately these stories are naturally interesting to us but that does not mean they are stories for our benefit or that we will ever know anything more than we do now.

When I made the same comment yesterday about the girls in Rotherham I was told it was irrelevant !!!!!!!!

Agree all the way felice especially with your SIL.. I would have offered any help I could, should they have neeed it whilst passing through 'my patch' (20 mins from the Spanish border).

Perhaps POGS could post some Rotherham taxi drivers reg.nos. so the good 'gransnetters' of that town can report anything suspicious to the police..... who will ignore it of course!

I think Southampton Hospital should explain how communications broke down so badly. Now he has been found why don't the police step back a bit & let boy and parents have some time in peace.
My grandson had a brain tumour so I have some insight to how they must be feeling.
My question is why have the police so aggressively in this case (and continue to do so) and yet they chose to ignore the girls of Rotherham.

Just heard on radio4 news that an extradition order has been issued for the parents, I thought they had not committed a crime!!
would this mean the child would be returned to the doctors who cannot give him the further treatment his parents want and which is available for his condition in other countries, including here it appears. Without their permission. As i said in my original posting on this subject it appears when you go into hospital in the UK you become the property of the doctors.

It appears that this family sought out less invasive treatment for their son at a hospital in Malaga. This treatment will not be available in England until 2018.

I sincerely hope the parents are released and this little boy is allowed the chance of a treatment which could be more beneficial to him.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29001388

hope this works

Mishap as far as I can tell the treatment the father wanted for his boy is available in other bona fide hospitals in some other countries. It isn't a case of unscrupulous private clinics offering quack solutions which don't work at great expense. Not only that but the father had reason to believe that the treatment proposed by the consultants here was dangerous. They were, according to the father, also unclear in their views, changing them once or twice about the correct way to proceed. He lost confidence in them.

Anyway, the father's excellent video is out there now and people are wanting to donate money and even, some, coming on to apologise to the father for jumping to an unfair conclusion originally.

The police and medical authorities are also being accused of deceit and manipulation in their efforts to find this family and their ill child.

I have not heard the news today, had not realised the parents are in prison.

Why? That is a total over-reaction, in fact quite wicked imo.
There are several other children as well, what has happened to them?

There are plenty of private clinics worldwide who are happy to take money from people in extreme situations such as these. It is very hard to sift truth from financially motivated fiction in these cases. What a sad dilemma for them.

What a dreadful mess indeed. There seems to have been a total breakdown in communications here.

It is common for parents/relatives to clutch at straws when someone is so seriously ill, and one of the jobs for the medics is to try and help people not to go down blind alleys and raise false hopes, often crippling families financially for no benefit. The use of an order to proceed with treatment is a last resort (and sometimes necessary), but the idea that this might prevent the parents visiting their child (rather than just careful monitoring) certainly feels unacceptable - he needs his Mum and Dad with him.

It is not acceptable that the parents are now in prison and this very young and sick lad is in hospital in a strange country without his Mum and Dad beside him. Let us hope that some reasonable compromise can be achieved, and proper communication is started.

Now the solicitors are getting in on it (rubbing their hands in anticipation).

Is it illegal to remove one's own child from the hospital where he is receiving treatment which you may or may not think is right if that child is not a ward of court?

I agree petallus. What a mess. And the batteries for the feeding tube were still working perfectly ok on that clip with Dad and Son.

I watched the video of the father explaining things from his point of view and found him to be credible and convincing. The doctors who were mentioned on the video, however, do not come out of it so well. Seems they refused to negotiate on treatment for the child and threatened a court order if the parents did not comply with their authority without question, which would have meant the parents being unable to visit the child on the hospital ward. As well as other unhelpful behaviour.

What a dreadful situation for parents to find themselves in.

Now the parents have been arrested and are in a Spanish police station, the child is alone in a Spanish hospital without his family, and the father is being prevented from raising the money to pay for treatment for his child which is unavailable in this country on the NHS.

I would like to protest at the way this family have been treated but I'm not sure how to go about it.