Two aboriginal girls have leukemia. In each case, the parents halt chemo to treat them with traditional native medicine. One, Makayla Sault, dies. A hospital goes to court to try to restart chemo for the other, J.J. Instead, a judge rules aboriginal rights trump the near-certainty of a cure with chemo. The Globe is urging that the decision be appealed. Readers, print and digital, respond
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In the poignant stories of Makayla Sault and J.J., and their acute leukemia, one great irony stands out (Death By Native Rights – editorial, Jan. 24). One of the key chemotherapy agents that is injected to cure childhood leukemia is a Canadian discovery, carefully extracted from the rosy periwinkle, Catharanthus roseus – a plant that had long been used as traditional folk medicine in Jamaica, India, China and elsewhere. This sad irony signals a massive breakdown in communication between the different groups of people who care deeply for these children and strive to help them.
Jacalyn Duffin, Hannah Chair of the History of Medicine, Queen's University
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Let's not make this an aboriginal issue. This story is about a human right to live and die as we wish. Cancer "survivors" are only patients who are still alive after five years, never mind that they spent much of the time in the painful hell brought on by chemo. Never mind that many times, their life is diminished forever.
Good for them if they found the strength and will to go through that. But I applaud the Sault family for having had the courage to stand up to doctors, and make the choice that best suits them and their spiritual values, whatever they are.
Parents who feed junk food daily to their children and keep them glued to a screen are much more dangerous to their kids and a liability to society than this loving mother who moved Heaven and Earth to stay with her child, offered her a gentler form of healing and gave her comfort and kindness to the very end. The family as a whole made an informed decision, which we should try very hard to respect, and not just because they are aboriginals.
Veronique Ponce, Toronto
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The decision you quite properly criticize in your editorial gives a bad name to aboriginal rights. For some, it will just confirm prejudices. Had this error-laden provincial court decision in the J.J. case proceeded to a superior court, it would almost certainly have been reversed. It failed to meet the legal standard of the Supreme Court decision, Van der Peet, on which the judge relied, the standard for an aboriginal right being that the "activity must be an element of a practice, custom or tradition integral to the distinctive culture …[from] the precontact period." As you note, vitamin drips and cold laser therapy hardly met that standard.
John Edmond, Ottawa
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Bravo to The Globe and Mail for calling on the Ontario government to appeal last November's court ruling that gave aboriginal parents the right to pull J.J. from chemotherapy. Aboriginal rights are, and should always be, a fundamental value in Canadian society. But so, too, is the right to life.
There is no easy answer to the question of when the state should be able to mandate medical treatment over the wishes of parents. This matter should be heard by higher level courts in this country in the interests of furthering the debate and finding the right balance. That balance was clearly not found by the one judge who heard the case.
James Johnson, MD, Toronto
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If people can refuse transfusions, then this is no different.
Tracy Lynn Tobin, Vancouver
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As a former child-welfare social worker and now a hospital social worker, I'd like to ask: How is it that the community expects a child-protection agency to force chemotherapy on a child against her and her parents' wishes?
I think we can all agree that chemotherapy is not the same as a blood transfusion. Does the Brant Family and Children's Services simply get a supervision order, thus legally compelling parents to take a child to the hospital, and the child to accept chemo against her will?
What if the treatment results in an untimely death or long-term physical impairment? What if the supervision order is not effective? Does the Brant Family and Children's Services simply apprehend the child, place her in foster care, strap her into a car, and force chemo against her will?
How does all of this impact the child emotionally? Does any child have any right to refuse treatment, regardless of whether they are native or non-native? Does the community think it is easy for social workers to apprehend a child to force chemotherapy? And what about the effect on the foster parent who has to care for the ill child?
This issue is not as simple as your editorial suggests. The family refused traditional Western medicine to accept another form of non-traditional Western "medicine." I can certainly see the hospital's need to ensure that it has done, and has attempted to make sure that it has done everything in its power to ensure that the child who was under its care received the best treatment possible. The hospital's doctors have informed, explained and provided the outcomes of the proposed therapy. They have done their job.
In the view of most people, the family is seen as making a bad decision. This is simply a narrow and emotional response without the aid of a broader lens. In the end, it's the family that has to grieve their decisions and the death of their child. This is not just a native issue, it is a human-rights decision.
Trish Johnston, Hamilton
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ON REFLECTION Letters to the editor
Oil and taxes
The recent drop in oil prices has given our governments an opportunity.
Restore the federal GST to 7 per cent, with the increase used for dedicated funding: 1 per cent to pay for infrastructure projects (badly needed), the other 1 per cent to pay down the debt (also badly needed).
And introduce a new gas tax of five to 10 cents per litre. Gas will still be far cheaper than we've been used to paying.
Our leaders need to lead, not just implement what they think will buy them votes next election.
John Miller, Victoria
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Food and taxes
Re Tax Junk Food (Jan. 29): Letter writer Mary Lapner wants to tax junk food and increase the already high taxes on gasoline to fight obesity and make us all healthier.
She conveniently ignores one simple fact – the money that I earn belongs to me and not the government.
I am tired of "nanny staters" and social engineers constantly looking for reasons to impose new taxes.
Wayne McVittie, Stouffville, Ont.
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Foes, friends, terror
Re CSIS To Be Given New Anti-Terror Powers (Jan. 30): As we stand on the verge of ever-increasing intrusions on our privacy and freedoms in the name of defeating terrorism, I cannot help thinking that the way to defeat your enemy is by making him your friend.
Every enemy we kill creates more enemies. Remember the idea of winning hearts and minds? It's a damn good one.
And now, of course, I wonder whether this opinion will make me worthy of suspicion and heightened surveillance.
Nigel Bennett, Stratford, Ont.
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Lies, damned lies …
Re Damage From Cancelled Census As Bad As Feared, Researchers Say (Jan. 29): "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase Mark Twain employed in describing the persuasive power of numbers. "Figures," he said, "often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself.'
Now that the Canadian government, sorry, Harper government, has eliminated valid statistics as a basis for policy, which option will be used to guide our Prime Minister in policy planning?
Ronald Jewell, Toronto