Ashya: a happy ending (kind of)

Now Ashya King is in a hospital in Prague awaiting proton beam radiotherapy, everyone has had time to digest the extraordinary sequence of events that brought him to where his parents wanted him to be in the first place. Let us examine those events.


First, a clear breakdown of communication and worse, trust, between Ashya's parents and the doctors who were caring for him in Britain. This explains why they did a bunk from the hospital in the first place. They were worried that if they simply announced their intention to decamp for Prague and defy their doctor's wishes, they ran the risk of Ashya being made a ward of court and all decision making power being taken out of their hands. And indeed, this is more or less exactly what happened when the hospital staff noticed Ashya was missing.


Next, they had to raise the money for their son's treatment and hence travelled to Spain to effect a sale of their holiday home. And it soon emerged that, despite media stories to the contrary (disseminated by hospital staff), the parents had taken steps to protect him on the journey.


Finally, when the facts emerged, the complex process of unravelling the arrest warrants was enacted. Thank God.


But what does it all mean for the rest of us? Defy your doctors at your peril seems to the most important moral. And this has profound implications for us all. Is it really the case now that if you disagree with your doctors about your child's treatment, they have the ultimate power to force you to comply? This case suggests that it is. For a few days it seemed parental responsibility had disappeared overnight, to be replaced by a patriarchal system where they know best, and you don't. And this has profound implications for all parents of sick children (or the elderly, should they have granted lasting power of attorney to someone else). Thank heaven facts came to light which set the situation to rights remarkably quickly. If they hadn't, we would all be afraid for our freedom right now.


Finally, did Ashya's parents do anything wrong? I think possibly they did. Maybe if they'd left a letter underneath Ashya's pillow explaining exactly what they were doing and why, the hospital doctors then could not have argued that Ashya's interests were not being served- indeed the whole situation may never have developed into the nightmare it did. Then again, maybe even that wouldn't have worked. Having been a doctor for 40 years I know perfectly well what arrogant dicks doctors can be: even today, some doctors see themselves as less expert advisors and more almighty bloody God- and there's your problem.