‘Radiotherapy is plain torture’ says Brighton mum (From The Argus)

Why is it that Ms Roberts is held not to have grasped the seriousness of the situation? Mayhap Ms Roberts has a view that quality of life is more important then quantity.

"She said “weak and fragile” Neon had lost his hair and suffered weight loss, poor short-term memory and poor co-ordination."

And what's the main effects when cancer goes untreated? Usually death.

I wonder what the child wants.

I think it's really scary that they can force radiation 'treatments' on a child against the parents wishes. every human being should have the right to a natural life and death, (so should every animal for that matter)
radiation cause damage to all cells not just cancerous ones, and forcing that on someone IS torture. whether or not it will save his life is anyone's guess, even the doctors can only guess.

Minion wrote:
I think it's really scary that they can force radiation 'treatments' on a child against the parents wishes. every human being should have the right to a natural life and death, (so should every animal for that matter)
radiation cause damage to all cells not just cancerous ones, and forcing that on someone IS torture. whether or not it will save his life is anyone's guess, even the doctors can only guess.

For a "guess", 67% to 82% success rate sounds **** accurate to me. And to me having a long and painful "natural" death looks a lot more like torture than that.

"I just felt that he would be much better off without the treatment and providing the body with what it needs to heal"

This is what's worrying about her approach and why she was not allowed to continue to control her childs treatment.

She seems to have completely failed to understand that cancer cannot be cured by the body itself because the cancer is part of the body, not something from outside that can be healed like a cold or flu.

In my opinion Sally Roberts is being very selfish, there is scientific evidence that radiotherapy works, her son will be dead if she does nothing for him, surely any parent with an ounce of common sense would see this? The body will not just heal on its own from a brain tumour!!!! unless of course she is a complete sicko and wants to get rid of her child, in which case the poor little fella should be taken from her for good.

mimseycal wrote:
Why is it that Ms Roberts is held not to have grasped the seriousness of the situation? Mayhap Ms Roberts has a view that quality of life is more important then quantity.

When it comes to old age I don't know anybody who wants the quantity of extra years of misery in a nursing home with no quality. But in this case with somebody so young it might be worth the risk. This is the point of the treatment. Quantity v quality is not the issue.

During the several decades since its invention, radiotherapy has become highly sophisticated. They don't just irradiate the patient and hope for the best; a variety of techniques are available to target the dose at the site of interest, with minimal dose elsewhere. Thanks to years of expertise in physics, electronics, oncology and numerous other disciplines, the success rates are good; if they weren't the NHS wouldn't spend the millions that these machines cost to buy and maintain.

And which of these subjects is Ms. Roberts' speciality? How many years has she studied the treatment of cancer?

Sally, cancer is not like a common cold, it won't respond to "being given what the body needs to heal" and it is naive and irresponsible to say so. If you know of a proven cure using such techniques I'm sure we'd all like to know about it. If not, bear in mind we have some of the best cancer treatment in the world here in the UK; stop dithering and take advantage of it.

inadaptado wrote:

Minion wrote:
I think it's really scary that they can force radiation 'treatments' on a child against the parents wishes. every human being should have the right to a natural life and death, (so should every animal for that matter)
radiation cause damage to all cells not just cancerous ones, and forcing that on someone IS torture. whether or not it will save his life is anyone's guess, even the doctors can only guess.

For a "guess", 67% to 82% success rate sounds **** accurate to me. And to me having a long and painful "natural" death looks a lot more like torture than that.

67% to 82% success rate, is not a guarantee that it will be successful, it's a 'good chance' that it will be.
I'm not saying that she's making the right or wrong decision, it's not my decision.
I'm saying that I think it SHOULD be her decision. Radiotherapy is as serious as cancer, people tend to be brainwashed into thinking that all medinces and treatments are good for you because doctors recommend them, which is naive. All medicines and treatments such as radiation are harmful and poisonous and one has to decide if the illness outweighs the side effects of the treatment.
I suspect that none of us here are experts on radio therapy or brain tumors, so let's not pretend that 'it's common sense to have the treatment' because 'some guy in white coat with a few degrees' knows what's best for everyone. Doctors are just people, too. And at the end of the day, someone makes money everytime a patient is treated, and the people who make the money don't give a crap about individual patients.

"it SHOULD be her decision"

if it's her treatment then, yes, it should be.

But it isn't.

STOP GIVING THIS NASTY WOMAN PUBLICITY!!

The HIGH COURT (ffs!) has already decreed she is not fit to judge this yet the pathetic sycophantic Argus, desperate for a few more sales, knows there's plenty of similarly mental, selfish women in Brighton that will eat up this rubbish the woman spouts!!



Totally wrong!! Her childs LIFE was at stake! How many fathers who THREATEN their childs life would the ARGUS KEEP GIVING INTERVIEWS TO?????!

Words are funny aren't they?

"they" You mean our society? The one you're a voting member of of? Try "we" next time.

"natural" You mean most women should die in childbirth and infant mortality rate should be pushing 60%?

"common sense" The sense of the common people: uneducated and superstitious. You'd think in an age of easily accessible education this phrase would have disappeared...

"torture" The action of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something.

Radiotherapy my well be torture - Sally Roberts obviously hasn't buried a child yet!

It is a truly terrible situation most of us should not even try to comprehend. However this parent (who i hope is reading), needs to consider whether the ordeal of radiotherapy, which should be a one off period of time, is preferable to the very real terminal alternative of this illness.
Outside of religious nuts, surely no parent would choose the latter. If she cannot be made to see reason, the legal system must step in to protect this boy's chances of survival.

Minion wrote:

inadaptado wrote:

Minion wrote:
I think it's really scary that they can force radiation 'treatments' on a child against the parents wishes. every human being should have the right to a natural life and death, (so should every animal for that matter)
radiation cause damage to all cells not just cancerous ones, and forcing that on someone IS torture. whether or not it will save his life is anyone's guess, even the doctors can only guess.

For a "guess", 67% to 82% success rate sounds **** accurate to me. And to me having a long and painful "natural" death looks a lot more like torture than that.

67% to 82% success rate, is not a guarantee that it will be successful, it's a 'good chance' that it will be.
I'm not saying that she's making the right or wrong decision, it's not my decision.
I'm saying that I think it SHOULD be her decision. Radiotherapy is as serious as cancer, people tend to be brainwashed into thinking that all medinces and treatments are good for you because doctors recommend them, which is naive. All medicines and treatments such as radiation are harmful and poisonous and one has to decide if the illness outweighs the side effects of the treatment.
I suspect that none of us here are experts on radio therapy or brain tumors, so let's not pretend that 'it's common sense to have the treatment' because 'some guy in white coat with a few degrees' knows what's best for everyone. Doctors are just people, too. And at the end of the day, someone makes money everytime a patient is treated, and the people who make the money don't give a crap about individual patients.

No, I'm not an expert on radiotherapy or brain tumours, but I have worked (as an electronics engineer) for a radiotherapy equipment manufacturer in Crawley; I have also, as it happens, been married to a doctor! The notion that these people don't care about individual patients is ill-informed nonsense.

Just about any treatment, for anything, has side effects; in deciding a course of action we take an informed decision based on weighing up the risks of a treatment against the risks of not taking it. If that means taking advice from "some guy in a white coat with a few degrees" then that's fine, except for those with a chip on their shoulder about doctors. He/she knows a lot more about the subject than you do - deal with it!

At least this women isn't prepared to blindly accept the 'one size fits all' medical advice given without researching exactly what the effect of every treatment and procedure will have on her child before proceeding.

From previous reports on this story, she wanted her son's doctors to speak to specialists from America who had advised her that other safer, less aggressive treatments are possible for her son so I don't blame her for wanting to look into this before starting a treatment that may impair speech, cause secondary tumours, personality changes, learning difficulties, limb weakness, infertility, tremors, seizures, migraines and growth problems

Is it really that easy to say "well, at least he'll be alive" without at least considering all the above that he may suffer from during, and long term after treatment?

JimP wrote:

Minion wrote:

inadaptado wrote:

Minion wrote:
I think it's really scary that they can force radiation 'treatments' on a child against the parents wishes. every human being should have the right to a natural life and death, (so should every animal for that matter)
radiation cause damage to all cells not just cancerous ones, and forcing that on someone IS torture. whether or not it will save his life is anyone's guess, even the doctors can only guess.

For a "guess", 67% to 82% success rate sounds **** accurate to me. And to me having a long and painful "natural" death looks a lot more like torture than that.

67% to 82% success rate, is not a guarantee that it will be successful, it's a 'good chance' that it will be.
I'm not saying that she's making the right or wrong decision, it's not my decision.
I'm saying that I think it SHOULD be her decision. Radiotherapy is as serious as cancer, people tend to be brainwashed into thinking that all medinces and treatments are good for you because doctors recommend them, which is naive. All medicines and treatments such as radiation are harmful and poisonous and one has to decide if the illness outweighs the side effects of the treatment.
I suspect that none of us here are experts on radio therapy or brain tumors, so let's not pretend that 'it's common sense to have the treatment' because 'some guy in white coat with a few degrees' knows what's best for everyone. Doctors are just people, too. And at the end of the day, someone makes money everytime a patient is treated, and the people who make the money don't give a crap about individual patients.

No, I'm not an expert on radiotherapy or brain tumours, but I have worked (as an electronics engineer) for a radiotherapy equipment manufacturer in Crawley; I have also, as it happens, been married to a doctor! The notion that these people don't care about individual patients is ill-informed nonsense.

Just about any treatment, for anything, has side effects; in deciding a course of action we take an informed decision based on weighing up the risks of a treatment against the risks of not taking it. If that means taking advice from "some guy in a white coat with a few degrees" then that's fine, except for those with a chip on their shoulder about doctors. He/she knows a lot more about the subject than you do - deal with it!

Doctors know a lot more than the average person about disease and treatment, but their very informed opinions are still opinions, advice, recommendations, not absolute fact.

I'm not saying that doctors don't know enough or can't do enough, I'm saying that they're not the magical beings that can cure everything, that people think they are.
People still go to the doctor with a cold (for example) seriously believing that a doctor can cure it for them.


I never said that doctors don't care, there are people higher up on the 'money making' chain than doctors, for example pharmecutical companies, making a fortune off of the sick. Sickness = money, of course they don't want patients to be dead, though; there's no money in that.



Anyway to explain the point that I'm trying (and obviously failing) to make:

I personally feel that a parent (provided that she/he hasn't been proved unfit or of unsound mind, after professional evaluation - if necessary) should get to decide on the appropriate treatment for the child, Sally Roberts is entitled to believe that natural therapies would be better than radiation, just as you are entitled to believe that radiotherapy may save his life. People have different opnions, and they have a right to have them. Sally Roberts is Neon's legal guardian and mother, I'm sure she loves him and wants to do what she believes is best for him, no matter what you, I or any doctor thinks.

put simply, you may (or may not) feel that it is ok to force radiation treatment on a child if it will save his life. That's ok.

But I don't think it should EVER be legally forced on anyone, whether it saves a life or not.
It is toxic.

I feel for her and she obviously has his best interests at heart and loves him dearly. Radiotherapy can cause problems in the future - it can have terrible side effects and cause secondary cancers. She obviously wants him to have quality of life. Of course, without treatment, he could die but it will not necessarily cure him and is very unpleasant.

I very much hope he pulls through and the treatment works for him. She is not a selfish mother - she has clearly done a lot of research into the pros and cons before coming to her decision. Although not everyone will agree she made the right decision, it does not mean she does not care about her child or his future.