Columnists
Blame
It would be difficult to believe that Ezekiel Stephan’s parents didn’t love and care for their child.
In fact, from accounts of their testimony, the horror of losing a young son is palpable. Ezekiel died in 2012 from bacterial meningitis, a disease usually treatable by a round of antibiotics. He was only 19 months old. His parents are currently on trial, accused of failing to provide the necessities of life.
The first time Ezekiel was before a physician, he was already brain dead.
His parents are amongst a segment who do not trust modern, western medicine, a fact that shaped Ezekiel’s otherwise healthy life.
His mother received no prenatal care apart from a friend and registered nurse who acted as a midwife for Ezekiel’s birth at home. His father is the vice president of a family company which provides alternative health food, once in a battle with Health Canada over a product that could not be proven to provide the benefits it claimed to provide.
His parents got health advice from their nurse friend, a naturopath and the WebMD website, which often offers suggestions for home remedies.
It wasn’t until he was nearing death that Ezekiel’s parents relented, swapping their olive leaf oil treatment for a 911 call. By the time he was airlifted to a hospital in Calgary, Ezekiel had less than a one per cent chance of survival.
Like being a passenger in a car about to crash, watching the story unfold is a horrifying experience in which there is no control. The parents made a series of wrong decisions and the result was the death of a young child.
But the trial doesn’t sit quite right. It calls into question who should be to blame for such a death. The Internet is a wealth of information, to be sure, but it’s also mired in wrong-headed ideas and rhetoric about modern medicine, scaring parents away from vaccines, drawing them toward unproven methods of treatment with confusing and contradictory claims of toxic chemicals and scary side effects in medicines developed by Big Pharma.
Even offline, communities of parents develop naturopathic dogma, discussing herbal medicine and relying on the opinion of someone who appears to be—but isn’t actually—a medical professional.
Having relied on frightening and misleading information like this, it’s not surprising Ezekiel’s death would be the eventual outcome.
We can’t know if Ezekiel’s parents were motivated by this kind of fear or by a stubbornness that borders on criminal negligence. That is for the trial to determine.
It appears they cared for their son and treated him in a way they deemed best. It ended in disaster.
But whatever the outcome of this trial, it does provide a cautionary tale for parents who mistrust modern medicine. Including alternative medicine in a child’s pediatric care might be within a parent’s prerogative, but it can’t replace professional medical care.
Comments (0)