The immunotherapy will try to boost Tyrell's immune response against the cancer in his right knee by introducing modified cancer cells taken from his tumour back into his body.

CAT scans performed both in the U.S. and Mexico indicate that the cancer has not spread to his lungs.  This contradicts the findings of his Saskatchewan doctors.

It is good to learn from this article by Jonathon Gatehouse that according to Bill Carney of Saskatchewan Social Services "there are no plans question the Ottawa treatment".  Is this a round about way for the Canadian medical and legal system to indicate that they made a lot of mistakes in this particular case?

The other article is by Ian Hunter, Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario.   His article starts with the headline, "The height of cruelty".  With the Canadian doctors' diagnosis of cancer in Tyrell's lungs proven wrong and the alternative treatment doing him some good, Mr. Hunter feels this is an opportunity to learn some valuable lessons.

The first lesson regards the legal system at its adversarial worst. Saskatchewan's Social Services system took a critical, personal, life and death situation and turned it into a legal issue.  The courts, once involved, compounded the injustice heaped upon the Dueck family.

Madam Justice Rothery trusted the judgement of the state's expert witnesses rather than Tyrell and his parents.   Mr. Hunter is quick to point out that if Tyrell had not been a minor or had been found to be a "mature" minor this would not have become an issue.

The second lesson concerns the Canadian justice system vs religious befiefs.  Tyrell and his family all believe in "the healing power of prayer", but they did not rely on prayer alone as they had tried the traditional medical treatments and wanted to try
alternate therapies.  These people did not imagine that there were any miracle cures waiting for them in Mexico, they knew they still had a tremendous struggle ahead of them.   However, the "child behaviour experts" were apparently worried that Tyrell respected his parents and shared their religious beliefs.  Obviously Madam Justice Rothery assigned more weight to expert testimony rather than the thoughts and beliefs of a boy and his family in a terrible crisis, or she would not have brought down such a callous judgement.

As we go into the next century. will the justice system continue to rely on 'expert testimony' over the suffering of a dangerously sick boy and will it continue to hold the individual's religious beliefs in contempt as it obviously did in the case of  Tyrell Dueck?

KMC