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

The question was not proton beam availability, it was whether this was the appropriate treatment for this child at this presumably late stage.

But surely if the NHS had a larger (or better managed) budget then more centres for proton therapy would have been built, as they have in other areas of Europe and the world.

Why fund it elsewhere - if we had our own centres then sick patients would not need to travel abroad?

I think it still comes down to NHS budgets. Doctors are probably eager for the therapy to be more widely available here.

It is nothing to do with NHS budgets Rosequartz.
It is to do with the fact that at present the NHS has only one machine, which is is suitable only for treating eye tumours.
The NHS has funded other patients to have the proton therapy elsewhere, as others have already written on this thread.

Well that is a step in the right direction, I say.

The CPS is seeking to withdraw the European Arrest Warrant.

I think the parents will be released shortly if the news reports are correct.

Just come back to this and there is a lot to catch up on.

However I would just like to say that I agree with Petallus's view that:

janeainsworth I did not find the article balanced at all

It is an opinion, but hardly balanced.
The medical profession will almost always close ranks and defend their own.
They are not always right.
They are constrained by NHS budgets which means that proton therapy is not yet available in this country, not because it is not effective.

Parents with a very sick child will go to the ends of the earth to try to find a cure for their child. The medical staff will do the best they can with the resources they have available. Therein lies the difference.

We can imagine all we like, but as the hospital is not releasing details of exactly why they took this course, we will not know until either a court case or an enquiry reveals all. By then the wee boy will be either a bit better or a lot worse.

This can't have been the first JW they have come across in their careers. They must have access to the same information as we have - that the objection is to receiving blood, not to getting medical treatment. Any difference of opinion or misunderstanding must be on a personal level, not on a religious one.

Another case, perhaps, of the media and/or public seizing on a "trigger word" so as to pin a label on the parents, instead of seeing the human being behind the label.

Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead of Hampshire Constabulary said Hampshire Constabulary makes "no apology" for the police's strong actions in the search operation for Ashya, adding: "We had medical experts telling us that Ashya was in grave danger.

"Medical experts were saying to us that if he didn't get the care that he needed, there was a potential threat to his life. Faced with those circumstances, I make no apology for the police being as proactive as we possibly can to actually find Ashya and ensure he gets all the help he needed."

Maybe the whole patient/doctor relationship broke down once doctors informed the parents that they would place an emergency protection order on Ashya:

[Mr King] claimed that doctors had threatened to put an "emergency protection order" in place after he questioned the strength of the chemotherapy and radiation that doctors suggested as treatment for Ashya, following his surgery.

"When I asked him why the little bit of chemotherapy was needed, I couldn’t really get what he was trying to say, and then straightaway afterwards he said, more or less, if I question him in anyway regarding his treatment, they would get an emergency protection order and take him away from me," he said.

"So after that I realised I can’t speak to the oncologist at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt I wasn’t in full accord with them they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest darkest hour, I wouldn’t be there to look after him with my wife, they would prevent us from entering the ward," he added.

I do not mean to do that Galen, jus to point out that both then and now, some,,, doctors seem to think they are the only ones who know what is best, when my mother was admitted to hospital after a fall and it was obvious she finally needed to go into a care home. I went over to the UK with DD, for 2 weeks, we tried to see the doctor at the hospital and were told to come back next week,, ok busy, eventually i did a strop and finally saw a doctor, he spent the entire interview looking at notes on other patients, and asked me to 'pop' in another time, I told him it was a long way to 'pop', and he revealed he thought i was there to talk about my Husband who had suffered a stroke. Duh. went private,, again!!
I still feel sorry for the poor man who had the stroke, that was just 5 years ago.

I did say 'minority' Galen I'm sure you've come across a few of these types yourself in your career.
However to threaten a protection order does seem extreme in this instance and I imagine it had to do with the parent's religion. A case of knowing you know best.

I think perhaps the police would have had to put it in front of the CPS.

#iwatchedthebill

jingl, the decision to initiate court proceedings was made by the CPS, not by the hospital or the police.

Please do not tar all doctors with the same brush. There is the odd arrogant twit but the majority are just as human as you or me.I think they did the right thing in this case, but that does not make me arrogant.

Mamie, the hospital - and the police - were right to want to find the child asap to check he was being properly cared for. The point is, once that had been verfied, they should have backed off. Not continued with extradition and prison for the parents. They are not criminals.

I had my oldest son at 17, a terrible pergnancy, sick all the time and sedated on valium for 4 months.
When he was born, 9 pounds 5 ounces, i was 6 stone!!!!!!!
he seemed fine but was just sleepy, and grew up that way, just quiet and biddable and happy.
At the age of 7 he was assessed by a doctor from the school authorities. we were told he had major brain damage, no eye and hand coordination and should be put in an institution, 1978.
His then headmaster and I brought out jigsaws which he loved to do, drawing, and showed he could already write his own name(not usual then) the alphabet and numbers to 100.
We sent him to a private school and although he has his problems, he lives in a sheltered environment working full time in a job he loves and with a full social life.
If that doctor had, had his way he would have been consigned to the dustbin, as i said in a previous post, doctors are just people who have made a different choice in the way of education, and are not gods.
Apologies for my writing and spelling, after a bad fall, my right arm is broken in 2 places and the little finger of my left hand is held together by pins,,,,, yucky.

Thank you penguin that just about sums it up. I have come across this type of arrogance myself from a minority of hospital staff.

There was a social worker on TV this morning (not connected to the case) who said that the authorities would not keep the parents away from the child without good reason. She agreed that it seems to have been handled terribly badly and that the child should be with his parents. She also said that, from experience, when the whole truth comes out there will be more to this than meets the eye - that they would not imprison the parents for no reason. We will see. It is a sad and sorry story.

Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of what the parents have been accused of this poor boy should not be denied contact with his family and neither should the parents be denied contact with their son. He must feel so frightened and alone without them. Commonsense must prevail to let them be together. The treatment and other issues can still be dealt with.

I am still at a loss to understand what people think the hospital should have done differently when the child went missing. A five year old, within a week of major brain surgery, disappears without the hospital knowing where they have gone and whether the parents have the necessary equipment to look after him. Surely they had no alternative but to call the police? Surely the police had no alternative but to try and find the family, within the legal means at their disposal?
If he had come to any harm then I have no doubt the hospital and the police would be under attack for not having done anything.
However desperate the family felt, I cannot see how a 1000 mile drive with a very sick child to go and sell a property can be construed as the right thing to do.

I thought I heard last night that the CPS were urgently reconsidering the case. They must surely realise that they acted in unnecessary haste.

penguinpaperback

Clegg and others have now made statements urging the legal process to be dropped immediately.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/02/ashya-king-clegg-criticises-full-force-law

Also, it has been mentioned by several sources that the mechanical feed can be done manually in the event of the battery failing, so to claim that Ashya's feeding machine needed expert administration was not relevant. These machines do block and need flushing and the setting needs altering when the food is going through at the wrong speed, but many family members get shown how to do this, mechanically and manually. My BIL taught the nurses visiting my poorly sister to do it, over the course of six months, as they were all waiting for training.

Copied and pasted, just one of the thoughtful responses to Max Pemberton's article.

As a Cleric with experience of hospital/hospice chaplaincy work I have found in my experience that the examples you give of parents who reject and withdraw from their child are the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, many, like the parents of Ashya are heroic in their fortitude.

Quite often, during long-term chronic illnesses requiring hospitalisation it is often the parents who have to 'superivise' nurses, junior doctors and the occasional consultant who don't know the child's requirements nearly as well as the parents do.

Example: A child who is nil by mouth for a very good reason being fed whilst the parents have taken a coffee break. Then upon reporting the mistake to the ward sister find that the staff nurse at fault takes umbrage and suddenly the trust is gone and an already intolerable situation becomes desperate.

Example: A neonate who after surgery to correct a congenital bowel defect is given an anti-biotic as a prophylaxis just in case of infection. Days later the child is fitting and pyrexic. The baby is on a surgical ward, looked after by surgical doctors rather than clinical doctors. Mum and dad know something is wrong and urge the doctor(s) to get the clinical team to take a look at baby. The surgical doctor refuses because clearly he knows best. He's going to give baby an anti-biotic, broad-spectrum, covers all bases he tells them. What he doesn't tell them is that he's administered the exact same anti-biotic that was given as a prophylaxis days before. So the gram negative organism that was resistant to the first dose is equally resistant to the second and baby ends up with septicemia and the bacteria grows exponentially and quickly crosses the blood/brain barrier and causes meningitis. That child now has severe learning difficulties and cerebral palsy and a £4.6 million pound damages award to put him in a position that he would have been in 'but for' the negligence, crass stupidity and ego of a surgeon too proud and tribal to call on the expertise of a clinical colleague.

I could go on and on.. Suffice to say doctors are tribal, egotistical, fallible, arrogant and do not listen to parents nearly as much as they ought to, especially when they are called out on the merits of their clinical judgments.

Doctors will often cite their objective expertise as the reason why the are 'right'. However, it is often their Achilles Heal when combined with pride and ego. Then objectivity goes out the window. Compassion goes out the window.

Com-passion.. From the Latin meaning, 'to suffer with'. It is a movement of the heart and it is what gives parents, who do sometimes know better, the courage to question doctors who aren't nearly as infallible as they might wish to believe.

So, Dr Pemberton, as eloquent as your exposition is, it falls down, because you have allowed the objective truth to be colored by your own professional tribalism.
No amount of eloquence can hide the truth that you are merely protecting your own and trying to justify a clear injustice by inferring that the King family are on a par with those who in desperation and fragility fail to stay the course. On the contrary, they seem pretty on the ball and determined to give their son every chance. If, as they say, the physician involved threatened to seek an Emergency Protection Order if they continued to question Asher's treatment, then it is a direct consequence of that misuse of statutory power that has led to a young child being left on his own in a foreign hospital whilst his frantic parents languish in jail.

As a clinician you know these mistakes happen on a daily basis. Why else do we have such an adversarial quango as the NHSLA which fights tooth and nail to reject the negligence and incompetence of NHS health professionals, thus preventing justice for thousands and compounding the hurt caused? My answer is because the NHS, as an institution, operates on the 'Ciaphas Principle'. Better that one man should suffer than the whole institution perish.

Before you hastily tarnish the reputation of these parents by your unjust inferences, at least have the honestly to acknowledge the failings and limitations of your own profession.

Had a look at the comments in response to MP's article and felt quite heartened.

Agree with jings. I think the media have been taken by surprise by the reaction of the general public. Social media in this case have been the family's friend. If they had not used it to represent their predicament we would only have heard the official view. Namely a Jehovah Witness family take child out of hospital with feeding tube which will stop working by Friday night. The child is in danger.
The family started to question the treatment their son was being offered. That, sadly, can still be a brave thing to do.