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Jehovah's Witness teen pronounced cancer-free
CTV.ca News Staff
A British Columbia teenager who won a legal battle over her cancer treatment is on her way home to the Okanagan after being pronounced disease free by doctors in New York.
The 15-year-old Jehovah's Witness' victory in court enabled her to be transferred from a Vancouver hospital to Schneider Children's Hospital in New York. There, she received cutting edge blood avoidance chemotherapy treatment that began last May.
"She is doing extremely well, has no evidence of disease at all and we're very optimistic about her being cured," said Dr. Jeffrey Lipton, director of Schneider hospital's Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation unit.
Identified only as Sarah due to a court publication ban, the teenager was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma -- the most common type of bone cancer in children -- in her right leg in December, 2004.
She was being treated at Vancouver's Children's Hospital but refused to consent to blood transfusions because of her religious beliefs.
After losing her fight in a B.C. court for her right to refuse transfusions, Sarah's family appealed to an Ontario judge. But that judge denied her request as well.
Sarah learned of the bloodless treatment centre in New York, but the courts refused her request to be treated there.
Adults have the right to deny blood transfusions; but children under the age of 18 do not.
In mid-May, however, her lawyer Shane Brady said Sarah had been transferred to the New York facility from Vancouver after a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that allowed it -- based on an agreement reached between the director of child, family and community service, the teenager and her parents.
Sarah told reporters in New York Monday that she hoped her experience would create change in the Canadian medical system.
"I hope that other doctors and hospitals will learn from this experience and try to incorporate the blood avoidance program," she said.
"They've treated me as a woman and not as a child."
Sarah's father said he was happy that his daughter was finally able to focus her energy on her treatment.
"Sarah's been able to fight for her dream on her own terms without having the added stress of fighting the government,'' he said.
"It's a real victory. This is more of a human rights issue ... Being deemed old enough to make her decision, being treated that way here at the hospital has been great."
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that blood is a sacred source of life, and they interpret literally a passage from scripture (Acts 15:20) that forbids the ingestion of blood.
"(The Bible) says if you keep doing these things, then good health to you," said Sarah. "So that was the scripture that I based my decision on, because I want to apply God's standards, and that was one of them."
Dr. Lipton told reporters that Sarah was battling an aggressive form of bone tumour that, untreated, has a 100 per cent mortality rate.
"With chemotherapy, it is largely curable, not 100 per cent ... but (Sarah's) reached a point in her treatment that she has finished her chemotherapy. And by all tests that we have, she shows no evidence of disease. So we're very optimistic in her case."
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