The name Tyrell Dueck is as well known to Canadians as Liam Williams-Holloway is to New Zealanders.
Tyrell died in June after cancer on his leg spread to his lungs, but his case provoked similar dilemmas over conventional versus alternative therapies.
In both countries the courts intervened to try to force the boys back to chemotherapy, and there were demonstrations in support of the parents' right to choose.
Similarities between the two cases - ages, nationalities and religious fundamentalism aside - are striking.
Tyrell Dueck was a 13-year-old from Martenville, in Saskatchewan, who attended an alternative clinic in Mexico at the wish of his Christian parents. His truck-driver father is said to have wanted to cure him with herbs, vitamins and faith.
No one doubts that the Duecks wanted the best for their son, and Mr Dueck poured his savings into trying to save the boy. Demonstrations were held around Canada to uphold his right as a parent to choose his son's treatment.
But many believed he was deluded, holding on to a belief that God and alternative therapies would cure his boy in the face of scientific arguments.
No one doubts that the parents of Liam want the best for him, too. The 4-year-old is now at a Tijuana clinic with his father, Brendan Holloway. The case became headlines after Liam's parents took him into hiding in February when the Family Court intervened to try to force them to resume the chemotherapy they said was ravaging his body.
It is anyone's guess whether Liam is at the same American Biologico Hospital that treated Tyrell because his mother, Trena Williams, will not divulge his whereabouts, and there are several dozen such clinics in Tijuana.
Perhaps the best known is the Hoxsey Clinic, which actor Bruno Lawrence attended before he died of lung cancer in 1995.
Cancer specialists here have called the Mexican clinics an expensive ripoff.
Tyrell Dueck died at a Saskatoon hospital five months ago. His parents, Tim and Yvonne, had refused further chemotherapy and a leg amputation for a tumour on his knee.
The Saskatchewan Government tried twice to gain control over his medical care through the courts but gave up when the cancer was found to have spread to his lungs.
His chances of survival were said to have plummeted from 65 per cent to less than 15.
When a judge handed control of Tyrell's care to the Government late last year, the boy refused treatment, saying he wanted to try alternative medicine, said the StarPhoenix newspaper.
In March the Toronto Star reported on his treatment in Mexico.
It described a slow intravenous drip of laetrile, an extract of apricot pits - a controversial treatment which conventional cancer specialists have widely discredited.
Tyrell took daily vitamins, enzymes, amino acids and shark cartilage.
His father told the paper at the time: "He's feeling wonderful. Better than I've seen him in a long time ... This is where he should be. This is where we wanted him to be. It was our choice."
But Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, told the Star that Tyrell was not offered a choice between living and dying.
"It was living by munching on a few Mexican herbs and praying, which his father had told him would give him a great chance of a cure, or opting for a lower chance and having his leg cut off."
An editorial in the Winnipeg Free Press said neither the parents nor the doctors should be condemned. Both were no doubt doing the best they could.
"Tyrell Dueck's fight shows us that cancer treatment, though much improved in recent decades, is still a work of probabilities, not certainties."
Liam's parents not alone in cruel cancer dilemma
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