CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : FRESNO : Doctors Back Off Surgery for Boy

It now appears that the parents of a 6-year-old Hmong boy will not be pressured into having court-ordered surgery to correct his club feet and a congenitally defective hip after all. State and federal judges have said that Kou Xiong should have the surgery over the objections of his parents because the afflictions will leave him a cripple for life if not corrected. However, Fresno County Social Services officials said that, despite a court order for the surgery, they have been unable to find a doctor willing to perform the operations without the parents’ cooperation. Kou’s parents went to court to keep the county from forcing the restoration operations. They contended that their religious beliefs hold that their son’s feet were misshapen because God made them that way to atone for an ancestor’s sins.