Dying Boy in Sleepy Eye: Parents Withholds Needed Chemotherapy From Boy on Religious Grounds

Daniel Hauser, 13, is dying of cancer and needs chemotherapy. However, his mother, Colleen Hauser of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, is in court this week fighting the treatment on religious grounds. Hauser has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, but the family is against modern treatment on religious grounds and believes in healing cancer with herbs and vitamins . . . and prayer.

Colleen Hauser says that she learned about alternative healing techniques “on the Internet.”

She insists on the treatment (and says that her son agrees) despite the fact that (without treatment) his survival chances will drop to 5 percent.
Natural-health advocates have been at the court to support the family and Dan Zwakman, a member of the Nemenhah religious group to which family belongs, has spoken for the family. He has emphasized the group’s motto: “our religion is our medicine.”

This is an all too familiar case of parents putting their children a great risk due to religious beliefs — forcing courts to intervene. Unfortunately, many of these cases do not involve the courts until after the death of the child in the form of criminal charges against the parents, here.

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