© UnknownFive year old Ashya King has a brain tumour and is now a ward of a British court. His parents were arrested, because they didn't follow their doctor's advice
A British boy is dying of a brain tumour. His distressed parents discover a life-saving treatment, available only in another country. Heartless doctors refuse to refer the child to the foreign clinic. Instead, they insist on going ahead with conventional treatment which, the parents fear, will turn him into a "vegetable". The distraught parents seize their son from the hospital and take him abroad. The UK authorities overreact wildly, issuing an international alert for the family. The parents are found in Spain and arrested, causing an outcry and interventions from leading politicians.
This sequence of events has been widely reported in the past week. It is what a great many people believe about the controversy over five-year-old Ashya King, who is currently in a hospital in Malaga. Many of them have signed internet petitions or written furious blogs, citing the case as an example of the authoritarian state or the arrogance of doctors. The problem is that the story I've outlined simply isn't true, starting with this basic fact: Ashya isn't dying. Despite headlines using the hugely emotive phrase, he isn't "terminally ill".
In fact, his chances of surviving five years are between 70 and 80 per cent, as long as he receives prompt chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy. His tumour, which is called a medulloblastoma, was removed at a major teaching hospital, Southampton General, just over six weeks ago. To maximise his chances of recovery, chemotherapy should have started within four to six weeks of surgery. It didn't, because his parents fell out with doctors in Southampton. The treatment they want is available at a private clinic in Prague, but that isn't where they headed when they left the UK. They actually returned to the south of Spain, where they have a holiday home, and where they were staying when Ashya first showed symptoms earlier in the summer.
Comment: Remember the hollow words from US top officials about how not to use force against the protesters in Kiev in 2013, as they were only wanting democracy. Well it is clear that the US is preparing to crack down with lethal bloody force against anyone that opposes it. The crackdown in Ferguson, MO, and in other US cities in the last few years have been mild in comparison to the crackdowns that are coming with the inevitable mass unrest in the US. That is why the police force now looks more like elite paratroopers with lots of surplus military gear from recent wars.