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The 22-year-old holistic birth waiting from Tampa said her had undergone two rounds of chemotherapy – "because they can get a medical court order to force you to do it anyways for a child with his diagnosis" – but also tried a number of home remedies. Rosemary and colloidal silver, reishi mushroom tea and bitter apricot seeds, to name a few. "This is one of our many alternative therapies for healing. #NatureHeals," she wrote.
But by Monday, police were telling a different story about Noah's healing progress.
"MISSING ENDANGERED CHILD!" Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is a hot spot.
"On April 22, 2019 the parents failed to bring in the child to a medically necessary hospital procedure," the sheriff's office wrote, naming Bland-Ball and her husband, Joshua McAdams. "The parents have more need to follow up with the life saving medical care the child needs."
The alert launched a nationwide hunt for the couple and their son, Noah, has toddler with long brown hair and big brown eyes. In a matter of hours, they were located in Georgetown, Kentucky. Noah was taken from his parents and was "now being medically treated," the sheriff's office said in an update. And his parents, meanwhile, have been investigated on suspicion of child neglect.
Since then, the case has attracted national attention as Bland-Ball and McAdams insist they are trying to find their alternative medical care, accusing the police and medical officials of stripping them of the right to choose their own treatment plan for their sound. Their supporters call the state's decision to take custody of Noah a "medical kidnapping" – a term that has become common in communities of traditional medicine and medical care.
The parents await a custody hearing Friday.
"We're not trying to deny any kind of treatment," Bland-Ball told reporters Wednesday, according to WFLA. "They think we're refusing treatment all around, putting him in danger, trying to kill him, but we're trying to save him."
Experts have warned against stopping treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, however.
Bijal D. Shah, who leads Tampa's Moffitt Cancer Center's acute lymphoblastic leukemia program, told the Tampa Bay Times that the treatment has been remarkably successful, with a cure rate of 90 percent – but it can require two-and-a-half years of chemotherapy. Stopping the early treatment, he said, means the cancer will almost always come back.
"I'm in the same box as those who fear vaccination," he told the newspaper. "The reality is, what we risk by not taking chemotherapy, just doing what we risk by not taking vaccines, is much, much worse."
Purpose fighting on Bland-Ball and McAdams' behalf, Florida Freedom Alliance, which supports "vaccine freedom," argues that the couple should be entitled to "medical freedom" and "freedom from" medical kidnappings.
Modern medicine skeptics have recently claimed "medical kidnappings" in a whole range of scenarios, including among the anti-vaccination groups. Bland-Ball and her husband's case unfolds at a time when so-called anti-vaxxers are clashing with the effects of getting vaccinated. In some locations, such as in Rockland County, N.Y., authorities have enforced short orders banning unvaccinated children from attending school.
In one notable case in February, police in Chandler, Ariz., Busted down a family in the middle of the night with their guns drawn to sixteen dangerously feverish, unvaccinated 2-year-old and bring him to the hospital. The boy's mother was reportedly ignored by the doctor's orders and refused to accept him.
In New York, child protection authorities took custody of a 12-year-old boy fighting leukemia last September. The mother, Candace Gunderson, told News 12 Long Island that she took her to Florida for alternative holistic treatment, but that when authorities found her, she was still going to chemotherapy. She lost custody, she said, calling it a "medical kidnapping."
"They do not want to be able to exercise my freedoms to choose medical treatment for my child," Gunderson told the news station.
Nonprofits such as the American Cancer Society have a long history of such "alternative" treatments.
In a January article, the American Cancer Society noted that about 40 percent of Americans believe cancer can be cured through alternative, unproven therapies alone, citing a 2018 survey by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
"This is alarming," the cancer society noted, quoting the study's findings, "because evidence shows that people who use alternative therapies in place of standard cancer treatments have much higher death rates."
Bland-Ball has said that she was not going to be chemotherapist for her because it was invasive, and since she believed in cancer, she did not believe it was necessary anymore.
"We want to get treated, because chemotherapy is so brutal we have a body, even an adult body, so we think of what it's doing to a little person who's only 30 pounds," she told reporters Wednesday. "We want to get him something that's healthier, that is more biologically sound for him, just a standard protocol that they use for everybody, because he's an individual."
She and McAdams said that's what they were looking for in Kentucky. Before they left for Kentucky, photos on Bland-Ball's grapefruit for "Vitamin D & Vitamin C Therapy" and trying organic juices and Madagascar periwinkle plants. Once they were apprehended in Kentucky, Bland-Ball defended herself on Facebook, writing, "No neglect here considering the best they've ever had and still be without chemotherapy – shocker!"
Since they have been apprehended by the police, Noah's parents say they have not seen him and do not know where he is or how he is being cared for, medically or otherwise.
"I have not slept," she told reporters Wednesday. I've been a total anxious mess, do not be able to do anything except think about him, think about what . "
Dozens of supporters have rallied around the family, some of whom have attacked the police for taking 3-year-old into custody.
"Medical kidnapping is real!" one wrote on Facebook in response to the police's urgent "MISSING ENDANGERED CHILD!" alert.
Katherine Drabiak, an assistant professor of bioethics and genomics at the University of South Florida, told WFTS that it is considered "absolutely a last resort." It is said that it is worthwhile in this case, but that the state "has a duty" to step into a child is at risk.
This article was written by Meagan Flynn, a reporter for The Washington Post.
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