How ignorance can kill a child.

I have people in my family who have said things like, "If I ever get cancer, I will show how you can cure it with a good attitude and eating lots of carrots." When I tell my colleagues stories like that, they tend to think that I'm exaggerating.

Take this Canadian family:

Anael L'Espérance-Nascimento was being treated at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa for cancerous cells in his brain and in bone marrow, which are currently not life-threatening.
Doctors recommended chemotherapy for the boy, but his parents have decided instead to treat him by feeding him on a diet of almost exclusively organic vegetables, without sugar or animal products.

Organic vegetables as a cancer cure. Their child will certainly die from this cancer. Why have his parents chosen this path?

[The child's mother] said earlier treatment at the hospital during almost the entire winter took its toll on Anael, who grew small and whose complexion grew green.

Chemotherapy is awful. Really and truly awful. But consider the alternative:

Anael's mother, Marie-Élise L'Espérance, said Tuesday the treatment is based on the idea that the body can heal itself if given the right nutrition.

Great idea, why didn't I think of that? Too bad that most great ideas turn out to be wrong. This woman is experimenting with her child without controls, and with no reason to think that it will work. My heart breaks for her, that her child is suffering through cancer at such a young age (he's only a year older than my son). But my heart breaks even more for her son, who will certainly die under her "care".

[Canadian government] officials asked the province's child protection agency to intervene, but it declined.

One wonders if the reason they're not protesting is that the child is already terminal. I feel sick.

via Eamon Knight