The ordeal sparked a national debate over the government's role in the lives of children vs. parental rights.

The Jensens sued the state, charging that several physicians and state DCFS officials conspired to force their 12-year-old son to undergo chemotherapy. Last year, a federal judge ruled the Jensens could not sue the state directly over the issue due to governmental immunity, but could press their claims against DCFS officials, two doctors and an assistant attorney general.

Primary Children's Medical Center could not comment specifically on Parker's case because of the ongoing litigation. But Dr. Edward B. Clark, medical director, explained the process that leads up to enrolling a child in a clinical trial.

The Children's Oncology Group is a not-for-profit, 220 center group born of the desire to find effective treatments for childhood cancer decades ago. Proposed treatment protocols go through many steps, including COG's safety monitoring board, critiques by the collaboration's member centers and then review by the National Institutes of Health, which has its own safety standards and other issues in mind.

Typically, all 220 centers are invited to participate in the trial. Those who join usually have their own Institutional Review Boards — the panel that vets clinical trials for ethics, safety and other key factors — look over the protocol, informed consent and other factors. Every clinical study at Primary is reviewed and overseen by its IRB, Clark said.

Most trials specify a window of time within which certain things have to happen following biopsy. If that time is not met, it doesn't stop someone from enrolling. Rather, he said, a repeat biopsy is requested to "note the evolving character of the tumor."

Primary gets detailed informed consent from parents and, if a child is 8 or older, from the child, as well. Informed consent includes a review of potential advantages and disadvantages, the nature of known risks and more. They often run 25 or more pages and without all that signed documentation, it's impossible to participate, Clark said. Medication wouldn't even be provided.

Physicians are not rewarded for enrolling children in clinical trials, he emphasized. The payment from COG is small, designed to cover the cost of tests, analysis, collecting and sending in data, and other expenses. Institutional support is provided for the centers themselves, but that happens whether or not the center actually enrolls even one participant.

"For physicians," said Clark, "there's no monetary or prestige value. This is a team effort with the goal to dramatically reduce the impact of cancer in children."

On Monday, Wagner's attorney Andrew Morse called the Jensens' claims "the reddest of red herrings."