Christina Gale Dixon convicted of denying teen daughter’s treatment of liver cancer via traditional methods instead opting for CBD oil before going on the run. Mother faces 19 months jail when sentenced. Does alternative treatment work?
An Oregon woman who refused to let her teen daughter have surgery for liver cancer, instead choosing to treat the condition with CBD oil and then going on the run with her has been sentenced to 19 months jail.
Christina Gale Dixon, 39, was convicted of custodial interference and criminal mistreatment in connection with the battle over Kylee Dixon’s medical care. After Kylee was put in foster care, she underwent the surgery, which was successful.
The mother was found guilty by a jury in Clackamas County following a four day trial last week. Dixon represented herself and testified in her own defense, reading a statement from the stand that lasted for more than an hour, The Oregonian reported.
The case for surgery and chemo
She also called her daughter, now 17, to the stand as a witness.
The state called witnesses including oncologists form the Oregon Health & Science University, state employees who worked on Kylee’s child welfare case, and one Clackamas County sheriff’s detective.
The charges on which the mother was tried stemmed from her attempts in 2019 to prevent her daughter from getting surgery to remove a cancerous tumor that was growing on her liver.
Kylee was diagnosed with undifferentiated embryonal sarcoma in March 2018 and doctors recommended she be treated with chemotherapy and surgery.
Without these treatments, they said she would die.
Several cancer specialists and nearly two dozen consulting physicians at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital all recommended a course of treatment than included chemotherapy followed by surgery.
Daughter is forced to have surgery along with chemo
The mother had claimed that chemo was not helping her daughter and that she wanted to explore alternative treatments which she believed would be best for her daughter.
Doctors then clashed with the mother who insisted that the remains of the teen girl’s liver had to be removed through surgery in a delicate but dangerous operation.
The then-13-year-old was placed in state custody, but continued living with her mother, who stopped allowing her daughter to undergo the treatment prescribed by physicians and instead opted to treat the tumor with CBD oil.
That is when the mom fled with daughter Kylee just hours before Kylee’s surgery was scheduled to take place in June of 2019.
The girl was located days later in Las Vegas. She was brought back to Oregon and placed in foster care. Her mother remained on the run until August of 2019, when she turned herself in.
Does alternative treatment work?
Upon being taken in by the state and medics finding a second tumor, doctors decided to operate on Kylee in early 2020, with the girl’s operation a success. Kylee was declared cancer-free shortly thereafter.
Dixon was found guilty of first-degree custodial interference and two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment – all of which are felonies.
Clackamas County prosecutors told the judge that they will seek a 19-month prison sentence.
One of the prosecutors, Bryan Censoni, said he was pleased the jury recognized that parents are obligated to make sure their children receive life-saving medical care.
‘From my point of view, I was happy that the jury accepted the universal medical consensus in the case,’ he said, according to Oregon Live.
Dixon, who did not comment after the hearing, has asked for sentencing to be delayed while she attempts to hire a lawyer to assist with the next phase of the legal process.
Since the case began four years ago, Dixon has reportedly hired and fired multiple attorneys.
The case reignites the debate whether alternative cancer treatment, including CBD oil works in removing and treating the cancer.
Reports Macmillan.Org: ‘Research continues to see if cannabis-based medicines could help in the treatment of some cancers or symptoms. But at the moment, there is no reliable, medical evidence to show whether cannabis, in any form, can effectively and safely treat cancer in humans.’
Notes Cancer Research UK: ‘There has been a lot of interest into whether cannabinoids might be useful as a cancer treatment. The scientific research done so far has been laboratory research, with mixed results, so we do not know if cannabinoids can treat cancer in people.’
