Florida Parents Fighting for Custody after State Intervention To Force Them To Get Son Chemo

Florida couple, Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland-Ball, have lost custody of their four-year-old son, Noah, after using alternative methods to treat his cancer instead of chemotherapy.

What We Know: 

• Noah McAdams was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia earlier this year. Two days into chemotherapy, the parents put a stop to it and instead began to use medical marijuana and CBD oil.
• After his first treatment, according to Bland-Ball, “He had vicious mood swings, making him violent, making him very emotional, and he also started to lose his hair right away” she said in an interview with Good Morning America.
• They took their son to Kentucky to research further options. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office asked for the public’s help to locate the family after the family failed to bring Noah to the hospital for a medically necessary procedure on April 22.
• The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office wrote on their Facebook that “the parents have further refused to follow up with the life saving medical care the child needs…The parents have possible criminal child neglect charges pending.”
  

• One week later the family was found and the state of Florida put Noah in the custody of his grandparents and forced the chemo to resume in May.
• They are now fighting to get their son back. Michael Minardi, McAdams’ and Bland-Ball’s former attorney, stated in May that the state is “saying that this child is in immediate danger when the fact that there is no cancer showing in his blood and there is no indication that at any point in time, that any cancer is going to come back in his body…”
• Dr. Bijal D. Shah, head of the Moffitt Cancer Center’s Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Program, said blood tests don’t give the full story. “We have no way of saying that he is cured of leukemia this early in therapy…We cannot assume cure because we see remission” Shah stated.
• Shah said the current protocol for treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia has a 90 percent cure rate for patients who follow the treatment plan, with St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital later confirming this stat for GMA.