Judge Orders Girl With Cancer Be Treated

A juvenile court judge Friday ordered treatment for a 13-year-old cancer patient to continue despite pleas from her parents, who fear high-dose chemotherapy will do more harm than good.

The judge issued the order after lawyers for Ed and Michele Wernecke were unable to produce specialists' opinions in time for the hearing.

"I'm not going to wait for anything else for you all to do, not one thing more," Judge Carl Lewis said. "There's never been an opinion counter to the one that prevails and there still isn't one today."

At a hearing Tuesday, the Werneckes had said the family would stop fighting the treatment if doctors specializing in Hodgkin's disease agreed it was the only alternative.

Their daughter, Katie, has also refused treatment, however. She exasperated doctors and social workers last week by pulling out catheters, refusing to allow her pulse to be taken, and violating a "nothing by mouth" directive by drinking a soda halting the high-dose chemotherapy that was to be the next step in her treatment.

The judge said he planned to go to Houston next week to meet personally with Katie and try to get her to cooperate.

Thomas Stuckey, an attorney representing Child Protective Services, said the state's responsibility was to help save Katie's life.

"You may be in a situation where she's been choosing her own death," he said.

Katie was diagnosed in January with Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system. By May, her parents believed chemotherapy had killed the tumor in her chest and feared radiation treatment would only harm her.

After a doctor informed Child Protective Services that her parents were interfering with treatment, Michele Wernecke fled with Katie, prompting an Amber Alert and the forced removal of Katie and her brothers from their home in June. The boys have since been returned to the family.

Katie has been undergoing low-dose chemotherapy and living with a foster family in Houston. High-dose chemotherapy was to be the next step in her treatment. At a hearing on June 10, doctors presented medical scans showing that the cancer had returned, prompting Lewis to order continued custody and the chemotherapy to begin again.