In a case that is chillingly similar to the Justina Pelletier case, two preteen sisters have been seized from their parents’ custody by CPS and Phoenix Children’s Hospital. In just five months in state custody, the oldest has lost 25 percent of her weight. The sisters are being used without their parents’ consent for genetic research. While their mother fears for her daughters’ very lives, she has been court ordered not to talk and to remove all discussion of the case from social media and the internet.

Kayla, 12, and Hannah Diegel, 10, both have been diagnosed with a rare form of genetic mitochondrial disorder, called congenital disorder of glycosylation, according to Health Impact News. Both also have gastroparesis, which is paralysis of the stomach muscles, and dysmotility of the colon. They have being fed through feeding tubes for some time, because their systems couldn’t process solid food adequately. With the feeding tubes, the sisters were able to gain weight and thrive.

In April of 2014, CPS of Arizona, under the direction of the Phoenix Children’s Hospital, took the sisters away from their parents’ custody. Since that time, the doctors have removed the feeding tubes, which has resulted in Kayla losing 25 percent of her body weight. She now has less than three percent body fat. Hannah has lost 17 percent of her weight under the care of the doctors in Phoenix.

Kayla Diegel, the oldest of two sisters seized by the state, before and after

Conservative News and Views reports that events in the sisters’ case link to the case of Justina Pelletier, the young girl from Connecticut who was kidnapped by Boston Children’s Hospital. In both cases, the state has sought to terminate parental rights. As The Inquisitr reported in Justina’s case, when a child is a ward of the state, medical research may be conducted on the child. Parents have no ability to refuse their children being used as medical guinea pigs.

The disturbing chain of events leading up to the girls’ medical kidnapping began in December 2013, when Hannah was seen by a doctor involved with TGeN and the Human Genome Project. Discussions were held between various doctors, including Dr. Philip James, who had recently transferred to Phoenix from Boston. He had been working at the same hospital that kidnapped Justina Pelletier. The children’s doctor of eight years mysteriously sent a letter to Mrs. Diegel, instructing her to transfer their medical care to doctors at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, which she obediently did.

At some point, the new diagnosis of congenital disorder of glycosylation was made, although the parents were not told until later. Not coincidentally, TGen and NHGRI, National Human Genome Research Institute, began a drug trial for “Suspected Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation” in March. It was less than one month later that CPS seized Kayla and Hannah from their parents. The girls were entered into the drug trial without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

According to Health Impact News, it is a case of “follow the money.” The girls just happen to have this “rare and genetically significant condition [which] is a potential goldmine to pharmaceutical companies and researchers. The odds of finding two sisters with THIS same rare genetic condition is like winning a billion dollars in the lottery, at least for the entities that discovered them.”

On April 8, Hannah was taken. Two days later, CPS took her sister. Since that time, the doctors have ignored years of their previous medical history and removed their feeding tubes, resulting in drastic weight loss. Their health has deteriorated. For some time they were allowed to see their parents, but not their brother. Now, even those visits are denied.

The two Diegel sisters with their big brother, before they were taken away

The family is devastated. The girls want to go home. They miss their mom and dad, as well as their big brother and their dogs and fish. From the photos and artwork that is posted on Facebook, the girls clearly love and are loved by their family. They are creative, beautiful girls who were thriving in their home, despite many medical obstacles. Now, they are scared, traumatized and homesick.

On September 6, Kayla wrote,

“My sister is fading fast and I am not far behind. At what point will somebody help us? Why isn’t a 20% and 17% loss in body weight enough to show we had our feeding tubes for a reason?”

Two sisters - Kayla and Hannah - before and after state care.

A little more than a week later, she wrote, “Please don’t forget about my sister or I. I have lost about 25% of my body weight. Please help me!”

Melissa Diegel tried to share her family’s desperate situation on social media. But now, the courts have ordered her to delete everything and not to talk.

According to Health Impact News,

“A court appointed CASA worker who had been working with the girls for the first 5 months of their abduction, was very much concerned with their health. She recently quit because she was threatened by DCS after she spoke up about her concerns for these poor children’s mistreatment in state custody. When the parents spoke out in fear of their children’s lives, they were threatened on multiple occasions as well, visitation taken away, and now efforts to terminate parental rights.”

Before all of the information about this disturbing case was scrubbed from her Facebook and Twitter accounts, a medical advocacy group set up another Facebook page, A Miracle For Two Sisters, admitting that they “hijacked all this information from the old site before the mother was COURT ORDERED to remove it.” The administrators of the page further stated, “We oppose efforts to quash free speech, hide the truth, and most importantly, WE WANT TO SAVE THESE CHILDREN AND HAVE THEM RETURNED TO THE PARENTS THAT LOVE THEM.”

After that occurred, Health Impact News and Conservative News and Views picked up on the story, using data from the Facebook page. The court reportedly ordered Melissa to contact the two media outlets to take down their stories. Obviously, neither one of them has, and the story is going viral. The story of the injustice to the Deigel family has gone beyond the point of being contained.

The two sisters miss their mom. This is a story Kayla wrote about how even young bats need their mom.

To be clear, the mother of the children, Melissa Diegel, has nothing to do with the writing of this article. But her children’s story deserves to be told. They deserve for people to fight for them to go home to the family that loves them and escape from the medical tyranny of entities that use the state to sanction and enable them to use them as unwilling guinea pigs for their research. Many see this as nothing less than medical kidnapping, similar to what was threatened for the Bidwell family earlier this year. The Inquisitr broke their story of being blackmailed by Dr. Terry Bierd to give their newborn an unwanted hepatitis B vaccination or have their 12-hour-old baby kidnapped by the state.

The Child Protective Services system is out of control in many states, so much so that Governor Jan Brewer tried to abolish Arizona’s corrupt agency with an executive order earlier in the year, according to AZ Central. However, the state legislature failed to approve the creation of a new agency in its place. So the violation of families still happens.

Phoenix Children's Hospital

Several legislators have joined together in bipartisan support on the federal level to prevent such atrocities as this from happening. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has joined with Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA), Tom Marino (R-PA), and Jim McDermott (D-WA) to introduce “Justina’s Law,” which would prohibit federal funding for medical experimentation on children who are wards of the state.

Supporters of the Diegel family have asked that people contact Governor Jan Brewer to request that the two sisters be released from the custody of the state and the Phoenix Children’s Hospital and let them go home to their parents. The phone number for her Phoenix office is (602) 542-4331, and this is a link to contact her office via email.

It was only after a public outcry that Justina Pelletier was returned to her parents’ custody, following her father ignoring the gag order from the state. It shouldn’t take such measures to see justice for children, but sometimes that is the hard truth. It is hoped that word of the tragic injustice being done to Kayla and Hannah Diegel will get out, and that the two sisters, who just happen to have a genetic disorder that is very profitable to researchers, will be able to go home to the care of their own family.

[images via Facebook and Top Box Design]