Daniel Hauser's Run for the Border

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 22 May 2009 13:52:41 GMT <== Politics ==>

Thomas L. Knapp at Center for a Stateless Society - I've seen this story elsewhere, but Mr. Knapp explains it well. After trying chemotherapy for his Hodgkin's lymphoma, 13-year-old Daniel Hauser and his mother decided to try a non-poisonous approach. Because their doctor disagreed, and he has a state monopoly on medical care, they are now fugitives, on the run, likely to the nearest free country, Mexico, where they can get alternative care.

I'm not a doctor. I don't play a doctor on TV, or even on the Internet. I don't claim to know what treatment is most likely to prove effective versus Daniel Hauser's cancer (Hodgkin's lymphoma).

What I do know is that Daniel is 13 years old. If he's in any way a normal adolescent boy, he's faced life-or-death situations for years, on his own (or sometimes with his parents' guidance), without a judge or police officer or doctor holding his hand. He's crossed streets full of moving traffic. He's looked over the edges of high places and decided not to jump. He's seen the household chemicals under the sink and decided not to drink them.

That Daniel is still alive is pretty good evidence that he's not completely incapable of thinking his own situations through and making his own decisions about those situations.

To some extent, the state obviously agrees: If Daniel found himself accused of a brutal murder, he could, if the state's courts concurred, be "tried as an adult" for the crime.

But when Daniel rejects the recommendations of a state-licensed doctor (after, by the way, initially accepting those recommendations and experiencing their effects), he's suddenly an incompetent child. When his parents, who have known and loved him for 13 years, and have managed to help him get through that 13 years alive, concur with him in that rejection, they're suddenly incompetent adults.

Daniel's story is not a medical story; it's a political story. It's not about Hodgkin's lymphoma or chemotherapy; it's about who's in charge.

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Essiac

Submitted by Caden A. on Thu, 28 May 2009 10:43:50 GMT

The article was true. Daniel Hauser decided not to undergo chemotherapy for his Hodgkins lymphoma. His mother, Colleen Hauser, took him to Mexico to avoid conventional treatments. Billy Best proclaimed the efficacy of Essiac tea. Essiac is touted as an herbal remedy good for treating cancer, and it won't send you running for payday loans with no faxing for it. Essiac is an herbal tea (that's right, fighting cancer with tea) that has ingredients known to be good for one's health, such as red clover. Billy claims that he cured himself of his Hodgkins without low interest loans for chemo and thorough the use of Essiac.

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Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

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Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

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... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

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