Exactly what we feared would happen

It's the worst-case scenario in real-time: Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old kid stuck in the chemotherapy trial debate and who has just been ordered by a judge to undergo appropriate, science-based treatments to manage and likely cure his Hodgkin's lymphoma, has just disappeared along with his mother in order to defy the court ruling – exactly as they'd threatened to.

You'll remember this all started when the kid first underwent one round of chemotherapy for his cancer, but then stopped after being discouraged by the highly unpleasant treatment. He, along with his idiotic naturopathic parents, then used a pseudo-Indian religion as an excuse to express that stupid old excuse of "Freedom of Religion" to try and wean their way out of proven scientific treatments in favor of "herbs and vitamins" – that, of course, they had learned of "on the Internet".

Daniel Hauser and his parents, Colleen and Anthony Hauser, were to appear in Tuesday in the southern Minnesota city of New Ulm. A judge had ordered the boy to undergo a chest X-ray to see how his Hodgkin's lymphoma was progressing.

But only Anthony Hauser appeared in court. He testified that he last saw his wife and son on Monday morning.

He said his wife told him she was going to leave and "That's all you need to know."

The dumb kid had previously threatened to resist, kicking and screaming – literally – any forced attempts to treat him with chemotherapy by officials. You'd think they'd take this as a hint or a warning to keep them under watch, but noooo ...

This is just sad news. The judge has (finally!) issued a warrant that orders the immediate arrest of Daniel Hauser when he's eventually found; he's then to be taken away from his dumbass parents and placed in state care, where he'll be forced to undergo the therapy for his cancer. Normally I'd be rather reticent towards condoning forced treatments against a person's will, but this being a brainwashed kid suffering from a disease that could very easily be treated and entirely cured, thus saving his life, I have no problem against the use of force, whatsoever. Sedate him and strap him in a chair if you have to. It doesn't matter if he's miserable for a little while, if it SAVES HIS LIFE. Seriously, he can complain about being saved, after he's been saved.

The worst part though, is that there's a very real chance that while precious time is wasted in trying to locate the kid and his criminally irresponsible mother, his tumors – already reported as having grown back to their full previous size following the dropping of chemotherapy – will keep growing until his survival rate decreases from its current 90% and keeps sliding downhill from now on. Eventually even radiation and chemotherapy won't be enough; they'd then have to resort to one of the riskiest and most painful operations, a full-blown bone marrow transplant. And even that has a deadline before it no longer becomes viable, and Daniel's survival chances literally drop to no more than 5% – his only hope then being for a spontaneous, unexplained remission. They do happen ... but are certainly nothing to be counted on, affecting only 5% of cases. You'll probably be struck by lightening before it happens.

God, I hate irresponsible parents. They shouldn't have kids. Ever.