We’ve all heard of Amish and other religions that refuse medical treatment for serious illnesses, sometimes tragically resulting in the death of those individuals. But medicine is an imprecise science, and sometimes, refusing the treatment works out for the best, as happened with 12-year old Sarah Hershberger.
The Daily Mail reports,
A judge formally ended the court-ordered guardianship of an Amish girl who resisted a hospital’s attempts to force her to resume chemotherapy, bringing a close to the fight that raised questions about the rights of parents in making medical decisions for their children.
The judge’s decision, announced Friday, came more than a year after Sarah Hershberger’s guardian gave up her efforts to force the girl into chemotherapy for leukemia.
Sarah and her parents went into hiding in the fall of 2013.
Sarah, who is now 12, no longer shows signs of being sick, said Kevin Dunn, a probate judge in Medina County.
Initially, Sarah had begun chemotherapy, but her parents thought it was killing her and took her off it, relying on herbs and vitamins and other natural medicines instead. They even sought alternative treatment in Mexico. Perhaps most interesting of all, they said they took her off the chemotherapy not because of their religious views, but because they could see it was not working. Let’s hope some day they reveal which natural treatments they used, so others might benefit as well.