David and Collet Stephan have been convicted in the death of their son. The child, a 19-month-old toddler, contracted meningitis. But a court in Lethbridge, Alta., heard the couple took their boy to a naturopath and gave him herbal remedies.
According to the Crown prosecutor, unconventional treatments of this sort fail to meet the minimum standard of care that children should expect. As a result, the parents were convicted of failing to provide the necessaries of life.
On a personal level, I agree with the prosecutor. There is scant clinical evidence that procedures such as ionic foot baths, infrared sauna therapy or colonic cleansing are medically beneficial. And while some herbal concoctions do offer relief from various aches and pains, they have no place in the treatment of serious and possibly life-threatening ailments.
But let’s leave the pros and cons of naturopathy to another day. There are devoted supporters who believe this form of treatment helps when standard therapies come up short.
There is an entirely different matter to consider.
Four years ago, Alberta’s health minister, Fred Horne, granted naturopaths full and independent status as physicians.
In doing so, he conferred on them the authority to treat a wide range of conditions, to give injections and to conduct minor surgeries.
Nor was this an isolated instance. Five provinces recognize naturopathy as a legitimate branch of medicine. B.C. has gone further than Alberta, allowing naturopaths to prescribe drugs.
So if the Stephans consulted a naturopath and gave their child herbal remedies, why didn’t this meet “the minimum standard of care” test? It might be argued that meningitis is too dangerous an ailment to be treated in this manner.
Yet according to the Alberta Health Ministry’s website, naturopaths are authorized to treat acute conditions. Isn’t meningitis an “acute condition”?
There were complicating factors in the case. A friend of the Stephans, who is a nurse, had told them she thought the child had meningitis. And according to one report, the naturopath they consulted suggested they see a general-practice doctor. So yes, the parents drove through several red lights.
But there was no suggestion the Stephans were bad parents, or that their child was in any way abused or mistreated.
They simply took the government at its word — that naturopaths were qualified to treat their child.
A guilty verdict was certainly warranted here. But the person who should be going to jail is either Fred Horne (for granting naturopathy a dangerously wide scope of practice) or the Crown prosecutor (for abusing her office if the child did indeed receive a form of care that was statutorily approved).
We can speculate what went on behind the scenes. Horne, like other health ministers around the country, came under severe pressure from the naturopathic lobby to elevate their status.
Perhaps he imagined people would have enough common sense to seek regular medical care in life-threatening circumstances. But while that might have been his intent, it is not what he did. Horne granted naturopaths a scope of practice broad enough that it should have shielded the Stephans from prosecution.
And then a child died, and someone had to pay.
There is a lesson to be learned here. Populism has a role in government, but only to a point. In fields that are both highly technical and impinge on public safety, politicians have no business pandering to lobby groups.
There isn’t some middle ground here. Either naturopaths are competent to treat acute conditions or they are not.
If they are, the Stephans should not have been convicted. If they are not, Alberta and B.C. should rewrite their codes of practice.
