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

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.

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

hope this works

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

But, my I point out that I'm not a neurosurgeon.
I'm just pointing out logical conclusions.
I feel very sorry for this family, but do feel that they are being very unrealistic

I would think then that a good option would be not to give further treatment such as chemotherapy since the side effects are likely to be further impairment and a high level of discomfort for this poor child.

My fear is that the Consultants concerned will insist on giving the treatment.

The sad fact is that not all members of the medical profession can be trusted to do the sensible thing. When my father was in hospital and known to have only a few days left to live, his doctor still insisted on prescribing vitamin tablets. I would have known nothing of this except a kind nurse told me about it and suggested I might consider saying I wanted the tablets stopped. Which I did.

Am I the only one who gets the impression, in this sad case, that there is a bit of a power struggle going on between the father/parents and the two Consultants?

So terrible to see the parents being treated like criminals. They may be misguided in their attempts to find the right treatment for their son but they are only doing what any parent would do and that's to clutch at straws.

petallus
My understanding is that the hospital have said , no further treatment is possible.
It's the parents who won't accept this fact.

According to the BBC news tonight the NHS have paid for about 150 people, 99 of them children, to have this treatment abroad.

I feel sorry for oncologists. They just want to save lives. They are not trained in counselling or psychiatry. Every day they have to tell people they have cancer. Many days they have to tell people they are not going to survive. Sometimes they have to tell people their children are not going to get better. Patients and their families do not always behave rationally. Many go into denial. Some are angry. Many are scared and sad. Some want to know everything. Some want to know nothing. In the midst of all this the oncologists have to make difficult decisions about treatment. And the treatment for the most part is harsh and, to some extent, damaging. It's a really difficult job. I know my son was a pretty difficult patient for his oncologists, refusing treatment initially (he's better now). I remember the day he was so impatient wanting to home after chemo that he removed the line out of his hand and discharged himself. His friend who had bowel cancer was in denial about how ill he was. Convinced the doctors were talking rubbish when they told him there was nothing they could do. So much in denial that he carried on working until he was admitted to the hospice a few days before he died - and did not write a will despite having a wife and child.
I watched the video and the father struck me as a man that was very angry and in denial about how ill his son is.
It appears bad that the parents have been arrested but remember we only know selected facts.