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The Tampa 22-year-old holistic birth attendant said her son had undergone two cycles of chemotherapy – "because they can get a medical court order to force you to do it anyway for a child with his diagnosis" – but they have also tried a number of drugs. home remedies. Rosemary and colloidal silver, reishi mushroom tea and bitter apricot seeds, to name a few. "This is one of our many alternative healing therapies. #NatureHeals," she writes.
But on Monday, the police were telling a different story about Noah's progress in healing.
"CHILD IN DANGER MISSING!" read an urgent warning from the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office that swept the news.
"On April 22, 2019, the parents failed to bring the child to a medically necessary hospital procedure," the sheriff's office wrote naming Bland-Ball and her husband, Joshua McAdams. "Parents have also refused to follow the vital medical care that the child needs."
The alert launched a national hunt for the couple and their son, Noah, a toddler with long brown and curly hair and big brown eyes. In a few hours they were in Georgetown, Kentucky. Noah was abducted from his parents and was "currently medically treated," the sheriff's office said in an update. And his parents, meanwhile, were under investigation for suspicion of neglect of a child.
Since then, the case has attracted national attention as Bland-Ball and McAdams insisted that they were trying to find alternative medical care for their son, accusing police and medical authorities to deprive them of the right to choose their own treatment plan for their son. Their supporters call the state's decision to entrust Noah with the custody of "medical kidnapping" – a term that has become common in skeptical communities when faced with traditional medicine when authorities take drastic measures to provide medical care that they consider essential for the well-being of the child.
Parents are waiting for a custody hearing on Friday.
"We do not try to refuse any kind of treatment," Bland-Ball told reporters Wednesday, according to the WFLA. "They think we're refusing treatment, putting him in danger, trying to kill him, but not at all, we're trying to save him."
The experts however cautioned against stopping the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Bijal D. Shah, who heads the Moffitt Cancer Center's acute lymphoblastic leukemia program in Tampa, told the Tampa Bay Times that the treatment has been remarkably effective, with a cure rate of 90% – but that it's not the same. it could take two and a half years. chemotherapy. Stopping treatment sooner, he says, means that cancer will almost always come back.
"I put it in the same box as those who fear vaccination," he told the newspaper. "In fact, what we risk by not taking chemotherapy, as well as what we risk by not taking vaccines, is much worse."
But an organization fighting for Bland-Ball and McAdams, the Florida Freedom Alliance, which supports "vaccine freedom," says the couple should be entitled to "medical freedom" and the absence "medical removal".
Skeptics in modern medicine have recently claimed "physician kidnappings" in a range of scenarios, including anti-vaccination groups. The case of Bland-Ball and her husband comes at a time when so-called anti-vaxxers are clashing with authorities seeking to stem a measles epidemic that has not been seen for decades as false information about vaccines spreads. In some places, such as in Rockland County, New York, authorities have enforced court decisions barring unvaccinated children from going to school.
In a notable case in February, police officers in Chandler, Arizona, broke the door of a family in the middle of the night with their weapons fired to seize a dangerously feverish and unvaccinated 2-year-old child. Take him to the hospital. The boy's mother reportedly ignored a doctor's orders and refused to take her to the emergency room, fearing that authorities would denounce her for failing to vaccinate the boy.
In New York, child protection authorities took custody of a 12-year-old boy who was battling leukemia last September, after his mother refused additional chemotherapy treatment. The mother, Candace Gunderson, told News 12 Long Island that she had taken her son to Florida for alternative holistic treatment, but that when the authorities found out, her son had been arrested and was returning home. in New York to continue chemotherapy. She lost custody, she said, calling it a "medical kidnapping".
"They do not want me to be able to exercise my freedom to choose a medical treatment for my child," Gunderson told the chain.
Nonprofit organizations such as the American Cancer Society have long warned against such "alternative" treatments.
In an article published in January, the American Cancer Society noted that about 40% of Americans thought that cancer could be cured by unproven alternative therapies, citing a 2018 survey conducted by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
"This is alarming," noted the cancer control company, citing the findings of the study, "as evidence shows that people who use alternative therapies in place of standard cancer treatments have much higher mortality rates ".
Bland-Ball said she did not want to continue chemotherapy for her son because of its invasive nature. Since she thought the cancer was in remission, she did not think it was necessary anymore.
"We want him to receive a treatment that produces fewer side effects, because chemotherapy is so brutal on a body, even an adult body, so think about what it does to a small person of just 30. kilos, "she told the press on Wednesday. "We want to offer him something healthier, more biologically sound, specific to him and not just a standard protocol used for everyone because he is an individual."
She and McAdams said that was what they were looking for in Kentucky. Before leaving for Kentucky, photos on Bland-Ball's Facebook feed show her to take her to the beach and feed her with grapefruit for "Vitamin D and Vitamin C treatment," and make her taste organic juices and Periwinkle plants from Madagascar. Once they were apprehended in Kentucky, Bland-Ball is defended on Facebook by writing: "Do not neglect this goal, as its levels are the best they've ever been and that they still do not have cancer after two weeks without chemotherapy – shocker! "
Since they were apprehended by the police, Noah's parents say that they have not seen him and do not know where he is or how he is being treated, medically or otherwise.
"I have not slept," she told reporters on Wednesday. "I've eaten a banana, I've had a total anxious mess, can not do anything if it's not thinking about it, thinking of what I can do to help speed up this process for see him again and find out what's going on. "
Dozens of supporters rallied around the family, some of them attacked the police for arresting the 3-year-old boy.
"The medical removal is real!" one of them wrote on Facebook in response to the urgent "THE CHILD IN DANGER MISSING!" alert.
Katherine Drabiak, assistant professor of bioethics and genomics at the University of South Florida, told the WFTS that if courts and police intervened to detain a child for medical reasons, it would be considered " a last resort ". She stated that it was worth considering whether additional chemotherapy was warranted in this case, but that the state "has a duty" to intervene if it considers that A child is in danger.
This article was written by Meagan Flynn, a Washington Post reporter.
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