Affiliate of wealthy St. Jude Children's calls CPS on family because son looks 'too healthy': mother

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital faced perhaps the greatest threat to its image in 2021 and 2022 when a ProPublica series documented the massive charity's financial practices: fighting deceased donors' families in court and allegedly "hoarding billions" while families in its care drain their savings and other children's cancer charities struggle to raise money.

Now the Memphis-based nonprofit risks a confrontation with the Make America Healthy Again movement and its Trump administration allies, following allegations that St. Jude's Charlotte affiliate kicked out an 8-year-old and reported his family to Child Protective Services for supposed noncompliance with his treatment plan, ignoring their documentation.

The Boyce family complemented 21 months of oral chemotherapy with "safe, doctor-disclosed integrative therapies" that made Judah so well that it raised red flags with St. Jude Affiliate Clinic at Novant Health Hemby Children's Hospital on whether he was getting chemo, according to a GiveSendGo fundraiser titled "The Boy Who Was Too Healthy."

"Despite hiring a private nurse to document home medication adherence and with lab evidence of the chemo in his system, the hospital filed a CPS report and dismissed him from their care," the fundraiser says. "This loving family is under unnecessary investigation and immense emotional strain because Judah's health success has been twisted into suspicion."

It seeks donations to cover the family's legal and travel costs and to pressure MAHA Action, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, to "use their influence to have the CPS investigation closed and to free Judah to choose personalized, evidence-based care."

MAHA Action organized a summit in D.C. on Wednesday featuring Vice President JD Vance, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., several agency heads and celebrities including former race car driver Danica Patrick, Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White and comedian Russell Brand, an event schedule reportedly shows.

Though closed to press, the summit has released a couple clips of Vance and Kennedy, the only two participants officially named by MAHA Action. 

"Science as practiced in its best form is that if you disagree with it, then you ought to criticize it, and you ought to argue against it, but you can’t shut down the debate," Vance says in one clip.

"As we found out the hard way over the last few years, it was very often the people who were outside the Overton window who were actually right — and all the experts were wrong,” continued Vance, referring to the range of ideas on public policy and social issues considered acceptable by the general public at a given time.

Shelly Boyce shared the family's bewilderment at St. Jude's actions this week with conservative podcast host Shannon Joy, joined by Boyce's longtime friend Kristin Cosgrove, a McCullough Foundation scholar who has collaborated with cardiologist Peter McCullough on research into COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

Thanks to "complimentary [sic] holistic supplementation," Judah has been in remission for 21 months, yet now he could be "medically kidnapped" by North Carolina absent a "doctor to oversee his remaining treatments" since the St. Jude's affiliate kicked him out, Joy wrote on X. "This family is being terrorized and traumatized by the medical industrial complex."

Some X followers said they would stop supporting St. Jude. An elderly couple said they had planned to give St. Jude their "entire estate" but would now change those instructions, while a woman said her husband would switch to a different charity among four chosen by his employer for employees to give a $2,500 annual donation.

Novant Health told Just the News that "patient privacy laws prevent us from speaking to the details of a specific patient’s experience" but gave a statement through a spokesperson.

"At Novant Health, our care teams are driven by compassion and guided by legal responsibility," it said. "Clinicians, like everyone in North Carolina, are legally obligated to report to child protective services (CPS) suspected child abuse, neglect, dependency, or death due to maltreatment. These reports initiate an independent investigation by trained professionals to assess the situation and determine appropriate next steps. Our care teams follow this legal process in accordance with their duty to protect patient safety."

St. Jude and MAHA Action did not respond to Just the News queries Wednesday.

Informed consent 'out the window at diagnosis'

The case has been steadily drawing more attention for nearly a month, according to an X search for terms matching the family and St. Jude, but exploded with Joy's show, which was shared by conservative celebrities and medical freedom activists including Robby Starbuck, Naomi Wolf and Mary Talley Bowden.

American Made Foundation founder Ann Vandersteel released a video Oct. 19 that spliced in documentation of Judah's conventional treatment — "labs, logs and nurse verification" — with family video of the boy, blurred to protect his privacy, and asked viewers to call Novant Health to complain.

The clinic said "his bloodwork isn't toxic enough" for someone on chemo, which Vandersteel characterized as the result of "faith, nutrition and love working alongside medicine," and yanked Judah's treatment with five months to go. The system now "punishes recovery," Vandersteel said.

Cosgrove said on Joy's show that she's "walked alongside" the Boyces since Judah was diagnosed with leukemia in January 2024 and started chemo, calling his mother, Shelly, an "incredible researcher." This past summer he went to soccer camp, then Vacation Bible School with Cosgrove's own son, she said.

They went public when the threats to contact CPS started because "parents should be able to advocate for their kids. They should be able to keep their kids healthy" while following doctor recommendations, Cosgrove said. She blamed the St. Jude's affiliate for false claims against the family and said CPS itself "has been fine to work with."

Shelly Boyce said she feels for other pediatric cancer families "who value medical freedom and informed consent, because that is out the window at diagnosis." 

The St. Jude's Charlotte affiliate, with a social worker in the room, diagnosed Judah based on a single complete blood count panel and wanted him to start chemo the same day, she said.

"The tone shifted immediately" when the Boyces asked for time to seek a second opinion and do their own research, and the message they got was, "You will do ... the one-sized-fits-all approach for this diagnosis and that's it," she said. 

"It was very clear that we had no option," so the family supplemented the mandatory chemo with "non-pharmacological" treatments including supplements, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, acupressure, red light therapy and "anything that is evidence-based" to manage chemo's side effects, Boyce said.

"We've been walking on eggshells, watching every word, making sure that we don't disrupt the system that doesn't want to be questioned," she said. When his red blood cell count went low, they managed to get it back up in three days by upping his supplemental treatments, avoiding a religiously prohibited transfusion.

Sending son into panic attacks for 'trying to separate families'

About a year ago, the Boyces switched to "maintenance therapy," doing more oral chemo at home and less intravenous administration at the clinic, and "they started asking questions" about why Judah "looks so good," Shelly Boyce said. 

"We gave them long lists of … everything we did," including praying over his medication, "and it got more and more hostile" as Judah failed to look sick enough to indicate chemo, she said. Cosgrove added that the Boyces had also asked about "adapting" Judah's treatment to his current health around that time.

Picking up her newborn to breastfeed, Shelly Boyce said the affiliate clinic flat-out prohibited the Boyces' suggested "evidence-based" remission therapies including mistletoe therapy and high-dose vitamin C. 

"We weren't just flying blind out here," she said, describing research she had read and advice from integrative care providers.

"The tone was very much, 'We don't like your questions. We don't like you bringing research'" and calling the clinic's protocols "outdated," based on small pediatric cancer populations and unaware of more recent research, Boyce said. 

The clinic started threatening CPS referral and sending Judah into panic attacks at their clinic visits, since he knows "they're trying to separate families," she said. At that point, their lawyer advised the family to hire a nurse to document what's already evident in Judah's bloodwork, taking videos, signing electronic logs and notarizing affidavits. 

The lawyer sent the clinic a letter summarizing the evidence of Judah's improvement and research documenting the supplemental treatment's effectiveness, but at Judah's next appointment, "his ANP was still higher than they wanted to see" and the clinic said it would refer the Boyces to CPS, refusing to look at the evidence, Boyce said.