(There’s a Q of the day at the end.)
This 11-year-old child did not have to perish. She had diabetic ketoacidosis, which means that had she gone to a hospital, doctors could have saved her. For her to get in this condition, she had to have been exhibiting symptoms for quite a long time, but her parents chose to pray away clear signs of distress - nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness. (AP):
The girl’s mother, Leilani Neumann, said that she and her family believe in the Bible and that healing comes from God, but that they do not belong to an organized religion or faith, are not fanatics and have nothing against doctors.Now the parents are entitled to their religious beliefs, even with tragic outcomes like this.…”We just noticed a tiredness within the past two weeks,” she said Wednesday. “And then just the day before and that day (she died), it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering.”
Her daughter — who hadn’t seen a doctor since she got some shots as a 3-year-old, according to Vergin — had no fever and there was warmth in her body, she said.
The girl’s father, Dale Neumann, a former police officer, said he started CPR “as soon as the breath of life left” his daughter’s body.
…”My sister-in-law, she’s very religious, she believes in faith instead of doctors …,” the girl’s aunt told a sheriff’s dispatcher Sunday afternoon in a call from California. “And she called my mother-in-law today … and she explained to us that she believes her daughter’s in a coma now and she’s relying on faith.”
Q of the day:
What I don’t understand is that if they believe in a higher being, logic (I know, I know) follows that the deity enabled humans to create and discover cures for common diseases, and thus prayer, while helpful, can be assisted by modem medicine, no? Even in biblical times humans had folk remedies — some that worked, some that didn’t. How do some religious fundamentalists reach the conclusion that medicine in any form must be supplanted by prayer?
113 Responses to “Child dies because parents choose prayer over insulin”
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Not funny, not funny at all, but the question you pose sort of reminds me of this joke:
A farmer is in Iowa during a flood. The river is overflowing, with water surrounding the farmer’s home up to his front porch. As he is standing there, a boat comes up, the man in the boat says, “Jump in I’ll take you to safety.”
The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”
The boat goes away. The water rises to the second floor. Another boat comes up, the man says to the farmer who is now in the second story window, “Jump in, I’ll save you.”
The farmer again says, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”
The boat goes away. Now the water is up to the roof. As The farmer stands on the roof, a helicopter comes over, and drops a ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer, “I’ll save you, climb the ladder.”
The farmer yells back, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”
The helicopter goes away. The water continues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof. He drowns.
The farmer goes to heaven. God sees him and says, “What are you doing here?”
The farmer says, “I put my trust in you and you let me down.”
God says, “What do you mean, let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!”
I read somewhere that the parents now think that their faith just wasn’t strong enough. Sigh.
>>How do some religious fundamentalists reach the conclusion that medicine in any form must be supplanted by prayer?
You’ve got me. The closest I can come to explaining is the position the Jehovah’s Witnesses take, which is that they won’t accept any blood or blood products, even to save their lives (or the lives of their kids). Their argument is based on the idea that the command from God to Noah to pour the blood out for any sacrifice, that they should not eat from it, predated the Mosaic law, and so wasn’t superseded by Jesus’s death. It was still in force, and so they extend the ban on eating blood to mean ingesting it in any way, including blood transfusions. The other half of the argument is based on the whole “what benefit to save your life if you lose your soul” idea.
I grew up as a JW, and we always looked at those people who refused all medical treatment as though they were nuts. When the JW’s are calling you crazy, something has gone horribly wrong.
I think it’s a symptom of black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking. They get told that they’re nothing without faith, so they get it in their heads that anything that’s outside of the church is evil.
And a lot of them are told that science is evil, because science says evolution is true, so they have to reject everything science-related — of course, they don’t think of cars or microwaves or TV as being produced by science — all they know about science is, they teach it in schools (so they homeschool) and doctors rely on it (so they stop going to the doctor).
You know the joke about the preacher and the flood, right? There’s a preacher who gets surprised by a flood, and he has to climb on top of his roof to escape the rising water.
A guy in a canoe paddles up. “Get in the boat, I’ll get you out safe!” But the preacher refuses. “I rely on God to save me,” he says, “I have faith that he will protect me.”
After a while, the waters have come up over the edge of the roof, and the preacher has to retreat to the very peak. Some guys in a rowboat come along and invite him to jump in the boat. “Without faith, we are nothing!” the preacher says, “I trust that God will save me from this disaster.”
A few hours later, the water’s overtaken the roof, and the preacher has climbed up onto the chimney. A helicopter flies overhead and lowers a rope ladder for him. “Go on, go on,” he says, “God will protect me! God will save me!”
And not long after that, the preacher falls in the water and drowns. After he gets to heaven, he’s livid. “Why didn’t God save me?!” he yells, “I put all my faith in God, and he didn’t save me!”
And a great booming voice comes down. “I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What else did you need?”
God helps them that helps themselves. What that means to me, is that you must do all that you can, before relying on Him to do the rest. So you must make use of medicine before praying for healing.
Do these people think that if you pray for financial blessings, they should just sit around, waiting for God to send someone to hand it to them? Of course not, you have to do what you can first. Then, and only then, will God step in, if you believe that sort of thing.
Do these people think that if you pray for financial blessings, they should just sit around, waiting for God to send someone to hand it to them?
actually, yeah…kinda.
>>Now the parents are entitled to their religious beliefs, even with tragic outcomes like this.
Well, yes they are entitled to believe what they like; but surely children are not property, and being deemed to young to make informed decisions to decline lifesaving treatment are entitled to recieve it? I mean, I kind of assume thats your view but never hurts to check.
As to your question, I think the above explanations are looking into things far too deeply. In the cases of most organised groups I recall doing this, they take one biblical verse (anointing with oil and calling the elders, James 5:14-15) and then base their doctrine from that. The followers then do it because its doctrine. Its in large part down to biblical literalism and doctrinal adherence. Though in this case they seem to have mroe idiosyncratic reasons,
Because people believe all sorts of crazy stuff. Think of the craziest belief you can come up with. Odds are that someone believes something crazier than that.On a more serious note, I would venture that older people are much, much less likely to be susceptible to this sort of idea than younger believers, and not just because of selection bias. Rather, they’ve seen, first hand, the transformation that modern medicine has caused in people’s lives over the course of the 20th century and so are more likely to accept the necessity of modern medical technology, while younger generations have no experience with what a pre-vaccine, pre-chemo/radiotherapy, pre-antibiotics world was like and don’t realize that these technologies were what basically created the world they live in.
I honestly think this is child abuse. It’s one thing for a grown adult to not seek medical attention in a life-or-death situation, but how can a child have an equivalent choice?
The fact that the parents are (likely) not going to be prosecuted speaks volumes about the stranglehold religious beliefs have in this country. So, it’s perfectly alright to watch your kid get weaker and weaker over the course of a few weeks and not do anything about it because you think the power of Jesus is going to cure her? How is this not a case of neglect?
I fear for this couple’s other children. I hope none of them chokes on anything because their parents think the Heimlich manuever is not part of God’s plan or something.
God helps them that helps themselves.
While I’m all for using the sense that you may or may not believe God gave you, that’s not actually a quotation or even a paraphrase from the bible, but from Ben Franklin.
I don’t think Christian Scientists or Jehovah’s Witnesses are allowed to refuse transfusions for their children. I seem to remember court cases from my childhood that decided that children were not to be held to their parents’ beliefs if they could be saved by medicine. If you want to sacrifice yourself and refuse medical treatment, tht’s ok, but children aren’t capable of making an informed decision, so they get to live.
These parents need to be prosecuted for neglect. I understand that they lost their daughter, and that’s punishment enough, but they need to have it recorded that they let their daughter die a painful death needlessly.
God will help them bear the burden of that conviction. It’ll just be another cross on their path to Heaven.
Okay, I don’t have an answer for the Q of the day, but I do have kind of weird feeling about this story. I wrote my senior thesis on women who are punished by the state because of drug use during pregnancy. I came up with a huge number of stories where the prosecuting theory was that the fetus has a)a right to life {sigh} and b)the fetus has a right to basic health care (which was made into law when Bush allowed fetuses to be covered under the state children’s health insurance program.)
I remember bringing this up with my thesis director, who basically said incredulously “OF COURSE people have the right to refuse care, even pregnant women”. Of course everyone wants children to have the right to health care, but it gets tricky when there seems to be a MANDATE that children receive care, especially when the state can turn around and argue that fetuses are mandated to receive care. Everybody wants women to have access to great prenatal care, but there’s always a danger that every single move made by a pregnant woman can be turned into child abuse (seen with women who are addicted to drugs, women who drink a glass of wine once or twice during their pregnancy, or women who eat fish, or women who clean their cat’s litter box). It can also be used to say women are denying their children care by giving birth at home without access to hospital care(which just barely became legal in my state of Missouri!).
So yeah, I have basically no idea how to approach this. I totally think the kid in this case should have gotten life-saving care, but when it comes to parental consent it can be kind of tricky. Of course with children, who are actual people, it’s easier to remove them from their parents if their parents deny them care, whereas the state prefers to punish pregnant women to save the sacred fetus from an unknown fate. I guess the point is that the state basically sucks and will kind of screw you no matter what you do.
I don’t think this is at all rational. But, it just struck me that a lot of these things seem to cleave to distinctions between manipulating non-human stuff (ex. making houses and cars; selective breeding of animals, genetically modified food crops), which are all areas which humans have been given dominion over; and manipulating our own biological stuff (medicine, teh gay sex etc.) which is the provenance of the divine. But, I just made this up on the spot - so there are probably a lot of holes in my theory.
Christian Scientists believe that prayer works better than conventional medicine (Mary Baker Eddy says prayer cured her, which is where the church started). The idea is that Jesus cured by prayer and that Christian nurses can do something similar. I assume other religious people believe somthing similar.
Officially their Church does not say that conventional medicine can’t be used.
For my part I can’t help but wonder what kind of financial situation this family was in. It may well have been that the parents had some kind of inkling as to what was wrong with their daughter, were afraid that it was something that couldn’t be cured and would have to be managed, and were leery of the monetary burden that sort of ongoing managment might incur. Justifiably, since chronic illness is one of the primary causes, if not the primary cause, of bankruptcy.
Once they’d called the doctor, once they’d had their daughter taken to the hospital, they’d have been committed; they’d have either had to pony up the money for their daughter’s care themselves or they’d have had to persuade whatever health care agency they subscribe to to do it. And that, as we all know, can prove to be a pretty daunting task. It may have seemed more feasible simply to keep the girl at home and to hope for the best. They may have reasoned that if the girl died, they could always attribute their reluctance to get entangled with doctors and hospitals to religion and not to fear of penury. Religion covers up for for a multitude of sins; that’s what it’s there to do.
I’m not saying that this is what happened but I can certainly envision circumstances under which it could happen. I fear that in the future we’ll all be hearing more, not fewer, stories of this kind—with lots of variation as to the details, of course.
bekabot, I had somewhat the same idea when I read the whole story about this family. They were self-employed, running a small business, and probably had no health insurance. Their kids seem not to have been getting regular medical checkups and vaccinations. This girl particularly had been enrolled in public school, then left there for home schooling, maybe because the public school demanded a vaccination record? Of course, the mother’s religious bent may have reinforced this no medical policy.
There is a similar case in the news today in Oregon in which the parents have been indicted for allowing a 15-month-old child to die of bronchial pneumonia which could have been easily treated. Those parents, however, seem to be members of a more organized religious group.
The article doesn’t say that they are Christian Scientists, but it sounds like they share similar beliefs with them. It’s truly tragic when one’s beliefs, religious or not, lead directly to the death of a child.
The same type of craziness is happening in places like South African for the treatment of AIDS. Instead of medicine, people are treated with healthy foods and vitamins.
It’s hard to say. So many have their own reasons why they do things, I don’t understand at all why they would let their daughter die like that.
I wanted to comment to Elizabeth above, the family lives in Wisconsin. So needing vaccination records most likely had little to do with leaving school as that state has exemptions. http://www.vaclib.org/exempt/wisconsin.htm
While I’m all for using the sense that you may or may not believe God gave you, that’s not actually a quotation or even a paraphrase from the bible, but from Ben Franklin.
It’s older than that. It’s the moral to one of Aesop’s fables, which would make it “the gods help those who help themselves.”
How do some religious fundamentalists reach the conclusion that medicine in any form must be supplanted by prayer?
Because fundamentalists aren’t for interaction with the world based on spiritual principals handed down through the ages. They are against anything modern, secular or in any way not derived from religious dogma.
Fundamentalism is defined almost exclusively as a reaction against the Enlightenment, which means science, modern medicine or culture that has grown out of Enlightenment ideals, such as art for art’s sake.
When not fulminating against doctors and scientists, Fundamentalists turn on any creative expression that is not overtly moralizing. A film, book, song or painting can’t simply be an expression of emotion or observation. Art must have a moral to impart and that moral should be spelled out with footnotes to Biblical verses.
Likewise, medicine that doesn’t address the condition through some moral issue (which is all medicine– disease has no morality) is suspect.
Fundies would rather teach a lesson than appreciate or even save a life.
But they (the parents) say they are not members of JW or Christian Science or any other religion or cult that would provide the framework for their failure to intervene. So they…well, kinda made it up themselves, claiming the Bible as their guide?
I suspect we have one sick little family here, more of a folie à deux drama, and whether they know it or not (and I assume they can’t let themselves know it, because they’re humans, not monsters, however monstrous their behavior), they were thinning the herd. For convenience.
Not everyone truly understands what it means to have children. You have them, and then they keep hanging around. You feed them and the next day they want more food. I think for some people, it’s infuriating. Maybe most disappointed parents manage to squeeze out “good enough” parenting, but some really cannot.
I swear I could make millions of dollars by marketing a line of Potemkin children.
Larkspur
Quite frankly, religion is allowed a pass on the age of consent concept and it shouldn’t be. Kids can’t have sex, vote, drive, drink, or do any other fun or meaningful act because they can’t make informed decisions. Why doesn’t the same apply to their parents’ batshit religious beliefs? Why isn’t more done to protect kids from dangerous religions? Animal and human sacrifices aren’t tolerated. Why this? Yeah, I’m saying letting your kid die like this is no different than putting her on an alter and cutting out her heart. It’s wrong and it flies in the face of civilized society.
This doctrine dates back to the days when medicine (strychnine, mercury, sulphur smoke, blistering agents) was as likely to kill as cure, so the tradeoff was a lot easier to make. This was also the origin of all sorts of herbal remedies and hedge-magic, some of which are also still with us.
And it’s not as though any possible outcome could invalidate the power of prayer:
If you allow a doctor’s care and you get better, you’ll feel guilty about not trusting God.
If you take the medicine and die, well, that’s what you deserved.
If you pray and get better, your faith is vindicated. Woo hoo, God loves me!
If you pray and die, obviously your faith wasn’t strong enough, or God needed you in Heaven, or something.
Why doesn’t the same apply to their parents’ batshit religious beliefs? Why isn’t more done to protect kids from dangerous religions?
Because who do you trust to determine what beliefs are batshit? If it were up to me, religious belief wouldn’t be an excuse to get away with anything, but atheists are only about 14% of the population according to the last poll, so my kind don’t get to choose yet. But a big part of the reason we have the First Amendment is because the Framers came from a heritage of Catholics telling Protestants that their religious beliefs were batshit and vice versa, and killing each other over it.
Danger is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, this seems like a pretty easy case to make a determination, but suppose down the road, a judge decides that allowing a Catholic couple to adopt puts that child’s mortal soul in danger. Where does it end?
The parents lost their “faith” argument and defense when the father gavethe daughter CPR. As warpped as it sounds actually trying to render assistance at some point, outside of prayer invalidated their standing and opens them up to charges
They trusted God for her illness, but not for her death.
Sadly in my neck of the woods we’ve seen this before. The Christian cult “The Body”
The Body was a “small authoritarian group that relies on “direct revelation” and not the Bible for its direction.” It was in the news because two children have in the cult died “unnecessarily. Samuel Robidoux, the ten month old son of the cult founder’s son, Jacques, died of malnutrition. He was not fed because they were waiting for a sign from God to feed him. Rebecca Corneau’s child, Jeremiah, died shortly after childbirth reportedly due to the lack of basic medical care.”
During the trials Rebecca was found to be pregnant again and when she neared term she was placed under protective custody - to protect the baby. When she delivered the baby was placed with family members who were not part of teh cult.
http://www.rickross.com/groups/attleboro.html
duh
copy and paste problems
The Body was a “small authoritarian group that relied on “direct revelation” and not the Bible for its direction.” It was in the news because two children in the cult died “unnecessarily. Samuel Robidoux, the ten month old son of the cult founder’s son, Jacques, died of malnutrition. He was not fed because they were waiting for a sign from God to feed him. Rebecca Corneau’s child, Jeremiah, died shortly after childbirth reportedly due to the lack of basic medical care.”
http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/a/attleboro/
I don’t know about the religious basis, but I think one of the reasons that the Christian Scientists advocated prayer over modern medicine was that, in the early/mid 1800’s when Mary Baker Eddy started the religion, medicine was still pretty brutal, and frequently did more harm than good. There was little regulation, many (most?) products and procedures were not adequately tested for safety or efficacy, and quacks and snake oil salesmen abounded. To be honest, I could see how, at the time Christian Science’s founding, staying away from doctors wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.
Today, however, it is a completely different story. There is no excuse for not taking your child to the doctor, especially if they are having serious symptoms. These parents should be prosecuted for not bringing their child to the doctor when she was ill for more than a week, and certainly for not calling 911 when she went into a coma (!).
This case is also another warning to spread the word about the symptoms of Type I diabetes, and how serious it is. Many people don’t know that rapid weight loss, excessive thirst, frequent urination (even wetting the bed sometimes, esp. for children), nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and/or a flu-like fatigue are all indications of diabetes onset. Diabetic ketoacidosis can also give a fruity odor to the breath. If you or someone you know is experiencing these symptoms, go to the doctor NOW. Not next week when work calms down. Not tomorrow after your kid’s big test at school. NOW. There is no reason, in this day and age, for anyone to die because of undiagnosed diabetes.
The medical profession does not exactly inspire confidence.
#24: You are looking at it from the wrong perspective. We don’t have to examine religious beliefs to see if they are kooky. We just have to draw up a set of rights for children. So, we say for example that children have a right to medical attention. If they so obviously need it and don’t get it, then you have violated that.
We don’t need to judge beliefs, just create a structure that assigns a certain minimum level of treatment for children who are after all not property. Then we simply ignore the whys and wheretofores and ensure these are met.
If you pray hard enough, you can force God to
bend to your willanswer you, proving that he exists. Especially if it’s kids… isn’t that what child sacrifice is usually about? Offering up what you hold most dear to catch the eye of some deity?You know what’s really bad about this case? It was predicted 35 years on an episode of Emergency!. In one episode a child nearly died of the exact same thing, all because his father didn’t want to take the kid to a doctor (in that case, because he had thought the child was dying of Tay-Sachs and nothing could be done anyway).
In an analogous situation, the ex-fiancee of my closest friend–to all accounts, an extremely pious woman, the sort who thinks there’s no situation that can’t be improved with prayer, and plenty of it–has an adult child who was recently indited for a serious crime.
It’s an unambiguous, open-and-shut case, the act itself caught on tape, with tons of supporting physical evidence and a full confession, involving intentional violence resulting in someone’s death, under the most unsympathetic circumstances. The charge is murder, in a state where they still have capital punishment.
Now, even in a straightforward case like this, the DA has some leeway. The kid could have bargained down to manslaughter, with the hope of seeing daylight again in this life, while saving the state the cost of a trial.
He didn’t do that.
Because all of them (including the inditee) have accepted Jesus. And they believe (like the Neumanns) that if they pray really, really hard, Jesus will personally take care of things–in this case, intercede with the jury and the kid will beat the rap.
You don’t need a magic 8-ball to see that her son will end up in prison for the rest of his life, while she (working, as she does, at a slightly-better-than-minimum-wage job) incurs debts for his defense that she’ll never, ever be able to pay off.
I’ve never met this woman (she’s literally a friend of a friend) and I know that her boy did a terrible thing, and that she’s being a fool, but I can’t help feeling horrible for her and her family.
Arun:
SO? Skipping the ER next time you’re injured?
Arun said:
Actually, on this one subject they do:
1900 child mortality rate: ~10% of infants died before age 1, together with ~0.6%-0.9% of mothers from pregnancy-related complications.
1997 child mortality rate: ~0.72% of infants died before age 1, together with 0.0077% of mothers from pregnancy-related complicatoins.
Source: CDC .
Reducing child mortality rates has been a spectacular success story for the medical profession, and one in which they can take justifiable pride. (Yes, some of that decline is due to better sanitation. It certainly isn’t the entire story.)
Playing with the 1900 levels of child mortality for religious reasons is completely insane. My only guess is that these are people who simply can’t accept the Doctrine of the Intrinsic Weirdness of God (or whatever the idea that God is really, really not some powerful buddy of yours is called), and want to force God to do something direct and showy to help. I’m a weak atheist, but that sounds suspiciously like hubris to me.
“The medical profession does not exactly inspire confidence.”
Nonsense like this always makes me want to spit. Modern medicine is a human institution so it isn’t perfect, nor are some of the people in it. But I have some words for you: polio, smallpox, pneumonia, diptheria.
All killers 100 years ago and now either virtually unknown or eminently treatable. I’m older than most of you, not only can I remember polio, I probably had a very mild case of it. As did my mother in law.
Sheesh.
MKK
The medical profession inspires a hell of a lot of confidence.
It’s one’s ability to access such services that is significantly more suspect.
As others have already pointed out, not having the money to pay for it all is a big barrier to accessing such services. How some of the talented, but still racist and classist, medical professionals may view you - and your symptoms - also hinders one’s ability to access such services.
Neither of these may feel very different from having no other choices than prayer vs. snake oil. But it is very different, and thus presents different solutions to problem.
As for the Q of the day:
I’m with Keith K.
This kind of religious thinking is really all about rejecting modernity. (But not, you know, cars or anything like that.) It’s also about dealing with difficulties by pretending that anything that happens in this life only matters if it affects your chances of getting the good afterlife.
My grandmother drives me batty with this kind of talk. It’s not just that every single thing that happens is designed by God; it’s that every single thing that she wants to happen is a reward from God, and everything else is a punishment (if it happens to someone outside the church) or a test (if it happens to someone inside the church).
I agree with the commenter who noted that the father’s decision to start CPR invalidates their religious defense. In this case, I believe the religion was used as a screen for the decision to neglect.
The distrust in medicine, I think, is a revolt against the modernity that brought us women’s lib and the civil rights movement.
If I were Jack McCoy, I’d screw around for about half the episode trying to get some sort of child abuse charges, then thanks to some dashing realization or simply a lucky feeling, I’d charge the parents with Murder II depraved indifference, and then they’d get off thanks to a soft jury and so I’d share a consolatory glass of whisky with Branch and Southerlyn.
But I’m not Jack McCoy, so I’ll just have the consolatory scotch because of morons like these.
This child had to have been alternatively schooled (home or private), because public schools insist on having updated copies of all vaccinations and if in school sports, copies of routine physicals allowing the child to participate. In fact, you get “reminders” if you don’t send in the proper paperwork at the beginning of the school year.
This girl, if she hadn’t been examined by a doctor since age 3, wouldn’t have been allowed to enroll in KINDERGARTEN. Her death is a terrible tragedy that SHOULD have been averted.
Murder. Plain and simple.
As I understand this tragic story -
Mom called 911 when dad was performing CPR.
This act alone dispells the religious defense.
Suddenly (when it was obvious that the child was dying) it was not only acceptable to ask for medical treatment - but to ask that it come immediately.
Sounds like a classic ‘reverse epiphany’
Sort of like the old joke anout turning a Liberal into a Conservative through mugging.
Nope, no valid legal argument via the Cosmic Muffin here.
The reason parents are in charge of their children’s medical care is because parents have a more vested interest in the well-being of their children than busybodies or the state. That’s not to mean some parents aren’t misguided or won’t make decisions with which a majority of people disagree. After all, a fraction of parents disallow television in their homes because they don’t like it. And while others may think that’s crazy, it is still within parental rights to make those decisions.
As for the arguments about modern medicine, it seems to me that there’s a sizable minority who thinks autism is caused by vaccinations, a miracle of modern medicine. This isn’t to argue that children shouldn’t be vaccinated (all mine are), but that parents still make decisions based on their own information and mindsets. Any attempt to regulate how and when parents are required to seek medical treatment for children will end with ridiculous and intolerable intrusion of the state on parental decision-making. Who gets to decide when a parent must seek medical care for a child? Once a child’s fever reaches a certain temperature? Using which sort of measuring device? What if said parent doesn’t have the preferred measuring device or doesn’t use it properly? The list of possible flaws in such reasoning are endless.
Sure, I think parents should take their children to the doctor when they are sick. But each parent still has the right and duty to make such determinations for their own family and expecting the State to step in is grossly intrusive.
Fear of medicine. Fear of public education. Fear of sex education (we had a real fantastic letter to the editor the other day concerning ’sex education’. I’m still stunned.)
The rise of superstition and the support of it by these parents not being arrested, tried and convicted of their own stupidity is dangerous.
We have people not vaccinating their children and risking the spread of who knows what illness because of superstition and stupidity.
One thing is for sure, humanity WILL die from stupidity…
Wander over to mothering dot commune and gander at some of the non-Christian people who avoid TEH EVIL MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT because of some perceived overarching conspiracy.
It ain’t just the fundies that act like this.
They’ve had several recent deaths due to mothers avoiding medical treatment because they believed in whatever woo was convenient, rather than a doctor.
“The distrust in medicine, I think, is a revolt against the modernity that brought us women’s lib and the civil rights movement.”
I don’t think that is entirely true. I understand why people distrust modern medicine and it is not always a rejection of feminism. Modern medicine (although it is starting to change) tells people that there is a drug for everything and that if you can buy it, it’s better. My husband went for a checkup and his cholesterol was a little high, so did the good doctor talk to my husband about diet and exercise? No, he talked about a prescription
. Doctors are starting to come around on breastfeeding, but for a long time they told mothers that their milk wasn’t good enough and that formula was better. Everyone knows that formula is not better, yet doctors still often tell mothers that they must supplement with formula when there is no reason to do so. Nestle and Ross Pediatrics spend a lot of money marketing to doctors as well as mothers. If a mother tells a doctor that she is worried that she does not have enough breast milk, rather than talking to her about why she thinks that and talking to her about breastfeeding management, he (or she 
) writes a prescription for Reglan -which is a drug that can cause depression. Want to have a normal healthy birth? You are not strong enough-you must be treated like a sick person and hooked up to machines. There is also a lost of fear about vaccines because of all the misinformation about vaccines. Many people are afraid that vaccines cause autism. Also, we have been vaccinating for so long that people are forgetting how dangerous the diseases are that children are vaccinated against. Do not misunderstand me-I take my kids to the doctor and I do vaccinate, its just that I understand where parents who prefer more holistic alternatives are coming from. Of course, choosing holistic medicine is not the same as relying on prayer alone. And most parents who choose holistic medicine still go to the doctor for things that are more serious.
I hesitate to rush to judgment against these parents. The article doesn’t give us the whole picture about them and we all know how misleading a newspaper article can be. Like an earlier commenter, I wonder about the financial situation of these parents. If children are pretty healthy, it might seem easy to skip well child visits. The last time I took my four year old for his checkup, he was weighed and measured and the doctor showed me his growth chart and basically told me what I already knew-he’s doing just fine.
It sounds like the parents did not realize how sick their daughter was and also they may have been in denial. If a kid is throwing up, sometimes there is nothing to do but try to keep them hydrated. If a family does not have medical insurance, I understand why they would hesitate before going to the doctor.
I don’t think the argument is that the state should have interferred. I think rather it’s that the parents have committed a serious crime, and their religious motivation behind letting their daughter die doesn’t make it less so. They watched her suffer, and they prayed and did nothing else, even as her condition worsened before their eyes, and if that isn’t an act of brutality I don’t know what is. And now they want to pretend that they did all that they could have done and their only negligence was not praying hard enough. But the reality is that they could have taken her to a hospital, and could have saved her life. They didn’t, and that makes them directly, criminally, responsible for their daughter’s death. The only thing that troubles me is that they might escape punishment because of the widespread delusion that prayer is the same as doing something, that prayer is like a magic spell that will effect the environment around and within us by calling forth the intervention of a supreme supernatural being. Why, they didn’t neglect their daughter to death. They were praying.
Here’s a guess for why she was home-schooled: she missed too many days because she was often too sick to go. It was likely a decision that made perfect sense for the parents, was less disruptive for the school and her education, and doesn’t have to involve vaccines, crazy cults, or anything else. If my child was too sick to attend two or three days of each schoolweek, hell yeah I’d look to alternatives other than constantly calling the school or picking up my child in the middle of the day.
As for the “Are these parents nuts?” question, I answer yes. But I think that they are likely to have their own view of faith outside of any of the up-commentstream mentions. The number of people opting out of any congregation whatsoever is growing, even in this country with among the highest church attendance of the industrialized world.
As for anti-feminism and civil rights being lumped in with medicine as an anti-modernity motivation: I don’t see that so much. What I see in cases like this is a deep distrust of that which isn’t understood. People don’t trust computers, new cars with all the computers, government identification with computer databases, and all sorts of technological things simply because they don’t understand them. (And those of us–and I include myself here–who say how leery we are of all the recording of us aren’t always helping them get past their mostly-unjustified paranoia.) Medicine is just the same: far too many people would rather rely on faith when pharmacological warnings and bibles seem to be printed on the same kind of paper.
Well, it should end with a judge being thrown from the bench for making decisions about religion instead of law. The state of one’s soul, or even the existence of a soul, is a First Amendment issue. No judge could bar an adoption based solely on the religious creed of the parents.
Now, failing to provide medical care for a treatable illness? That’s neglect. It’s fine for an adult to do stupid shit like refuse to take insulin, but it’s not okay for them to do that for their children. It’s neglect at the very least.
It doesn’t matter if they did it for religious reasons or just b/c they were lazy or hateful. The act (or lack thereof) is what is illegal. Judges can deal with that.
Whether the child’s soul was saved by avoiding doctors? The judiciary can’t rule on that.
As for vaccines…all parents HAVE to vaccinate their children or the diseases come back. That’s kind of the whole point about a vaccination program.
Vaccines aren’t 100% effective, so unvaccinated kids can spread illness to more than just other unvaccinated kids.
There’s little evidence that autism is caused by vaccines. It’s diagnosed more often now than ever, perhaps b/c people are more aware of it. But the mercury that worries anti-vaccinators is being removed from vaccines anyway.
Pertussis, diphtheria, even measles and chicken pox can kill children. Yes, it’s rare that you would die from chicken pox, but it’s even rarer that the chicken pox vaccine would cause you harm.
I think mandating vaccines for school is fine. It insures most kids are vaccinated (even the poor can have their kids vaccinated for free). If parents want to homeschool to keep their kids unvaccinated, fine. It seems a reasonable compromise–if you’re going to mass kids together, make sure their not going to infect each other with anything worse than the common cold.
I think the parents should be charged with first degree murder. I don’t care whatever their beliefs are. In this case they deliberately jeopardized the life of a minor, who even if she wanted to would not have been able to seek care because the parents would have probably refused consent to treat. This is no different than if they would have starved her to death. It is murder by failing to provide life sustaining help. If they believe so much in prayer, I would like to know why do they bother to eat three meals every day. Why do they not just put their faith in prayer.
I can’t answer the question because those parents’ mindset is so completely anathema to me. Why did they do it? Because they loved their dogma more than their child? Because they’re just plain stupid, combined with blindly stubborn?
I hope the parents both go to prison for just as long as an abusive, neglectful parent who locks their kid in a cage without food or sanitation. I hope “but they were praying, and just following their religion” is not deemed to be a mitigating factor, and they get sentenced to prison for murdering their child.
There’s little evidence that autism is caused by vaccines. It’s diagnosed more often now than ever, perhaps b/c people are more aware of it. But the mercury that worries anti-vaccinators is being removed from vaccines anyway.
More precisely, there is NO credible evidence that vaccines cause autism. (Source:http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=14). And thimerosal (ethyl mercury) was virtually eliminated from childhood vaccines in 2001. This has not led to a decrease in autism.
There may be reasons to distrust the medical establishment, but vaccines causing autism is not one of them.
God says, “What do you mean, let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!”
“What do you mean, I let you down? I sent you pediatricians and insulin injections!”
I can’t believe I am going to say this, but for once I actually agree with Sharon. Do cases like this make me sick because of the level of delusion involved and the loss of this child’s life? Yes. Do I want the state to start defining what types of medical treatment I, as a parent, can consent to as my child’s legal guardian? Hell no. Doctors do not always have the best interest of the individual patient in mind and I am not ceding my right to act in my child’s best interest because some parents do a shitty job at it.
We’ll use vaccines as an example. My son was vaccinated on schedule, but if we say that parents cannot refuse any treatment that would save their child’s life, we are saying that parents cannot refuse vaccination even when they have serious (if perhaps misguided) concerns about the safety of vaccines. Having concern about vaccines and their ingredients is reasonable — not all vaccines are as safe as they can be and it is reasonable to desire that they are as safe as we can make them. It’s not just mercury parents worry about, but things like the amount of aluminum in the vaccines– which in combo vaccines is far higher than is considered safe for ADULT bodies, much less children’s bodies. There is some evidence that aluminum injected into the body does accumulate and can cause neurological problems. There are also some children who should not receive vaccines for medical reasons, but these conditions may not be apparent at the age at which the CDC mandates vaccination. If my family had a history of regressive autism, I would probably be far more cautious of how vaccines were administered to my child because what science cannot tell us is whether or not vaccines act to worsen autism in children already genetically predisposed to it– just that it is not the cause of the autism. Should we charge parents who choose delayed vaccination or non-vaccination with murder if/when their child gets a VPD and dies? No, I don’t think so. The parents took a calculated risk, decided what they thought was best, and were wrong.
The bigger question to me in this case is whether or not they have ignored symptoms of her diabetes since before their religious conversion. If the child had not been to the doctor since age 3, then it is likely they did not even know she was diabetic. Then you might have a case for neglect, since they could not use their religious beliefs as an excuse for not getting her proper medical treatment.
If you treated your pet the way this child was, you’d be facing prison.
Read up on DKA (NIH or Wikipedia) and realize that these folks need to find Gawd in a cell.
Most states and commonwealths waive fees for children.
Fucking inhuman morons.
1. If God exist, and he wants your child to suffer, than he sucks and you shouldn’t worship him.
2. If God exist, and he’s the only one that could cure you, directly, then you might as well just lie down and let him handfeed you too. Insulin feels like a miracle, because not only was it invented, Banting and Macleod didn’t copyright it for profit. If god is goodness than that’s really godly.
A farmer in a flood
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 17:44:01 -0500
A farmer is in Iowa during a flood. The river is overflowing, with water surrounding the farmer’s home up to his front porch. As he is standing there, a boat comes up, The man in the boat says “Jump in, I’ll take you to safety.”
The farmer crosses his arms and says stubbornly, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”
The boat goes away. The water rises to the second floor. Another boat comes up, the man says to the farmer who is now in the second story window, “Jump in, I’ll save you.”
The farmer again says, “Nope, I put my trust in God.”
The boat goes away. Now the water is up to the roof. As The farmer stands on the roof, a helicopter comes over, and drops a ladder. The pilot yells down to the farmer “I’ll save you, climb the ladder.”
The farmer says “Nope, I put my trust in God.”
The helicopter goes away. The water comtinues to rise and sweeps the farmer off the roof. He drowns.
The farmer goes to heaven. God sees him and says “What are you doing here?”
The farmer says “I put my trust in you and you let me down.”
God says, “What do you mean, let you down? I sent you two boats and a helicopter!!!”
we have been vaccinating for so long that people are forgetting how dangerous the diseases are that children are vaccinated against.
Very true, which gets us to the next point….
its just that I understand where parents who prefer more holistic alternatives are coming from.
As you point out in the previous sentence, they are coming from a position of ignorance– perhaps even willful ignorance.
Being put on a prescription for a problem makes us feel infirm and old and broken. Despite these feelings, that doesn’t mean that being prescribed a drug for something is a bad idea. People internalize the idea that medical treatment/attention (such as your example of childbirth) is a sign that something is wrong with them and don’t like the association. We need to stop taking medical treatment so personally. And, if anything, it is patients who are more receptive to medication as a solution to their condition than various lifestyle changes. I can’t blame doctors for bending to that natural inclination of their patients: after all, their job is to help their patients the best way they can, not bend the patients’ mindset to their will.
Lack of universal health insurance certainly plays a role here, because meeting with a physician for health advice is considered a luxury for many people. And if they do go, odds are they might be told something they don’t want to hear.
The bigger question to me in this case is whether or not they have ignored symptoms of her diabetes since before their religious conversion. If the child had not been to the doctor since age 3, then it is likely they did not even know she was diabetic. Then you might have a case for neglect, since they could not use their religious beliefs as an excuse for not getting her proper medical treatment..
Oh, I see. Only religious people have the right to murder their children. If non-religious people do it, then it’s neglect. Excuse me, “might” be neglect.
To me the issue is simple and stark. These people murdered their child.
Sophonisba: You flunk reading comprehension 101. I am interested in whether or not they believed– regardless of the source of that belief (religion or research)– that they were doing the right thing or whether they are trying to use their religion to cover up neglect. To me, it does make a difference as I believe we recognize intent as a mitigating factor when determining legal culpability. If it doesn’t for you, than so be it. I don’t know enough about the case to say absolutely that they should face criminal charges.
And you’ll notice that my primary example was of a non-faith based medical decision that a parent might make, which others would view as neglect, and yet I would not support the state charging them with a crime. I think that the non-religious (like myself, FWIW) will suffer more by undermining the concept of guardianship than the religious, which is why people should be really careful about making blanket statements about what constitutes “batshit crazy” reasons to refuse medical treatment and what would be deemed a “rational” reason.
It’s amazing to me that on one hand some fundamentalists believe God created the universe, millions upon millions of species, intricate ecosystems, a human race with an unbelievable capacity to learn, but on the other hand actually using their brains and ability is unacceptable and is discouraged.
Me personally had God wanted the human to be so lazy and non-thinking he’d have created the human race with swiffer duster refills in our skulls rather than brains.
It’s a crying shame that the adults were so self-centered and solely focused on where their dead asses wind up that they allowed their own child to die and suffer unnecessarily.
It’s actually a pretty simple case of death through neglect, once you strip away all of the religious talk. Throw the book at all of them.
In response to James, I offer Genesis: Abraham was willing to kill Isaac for his faith. God stepped in and said “no more human sacrifice”. The difference between dying of untreated diabetes and of an axe to the head? Weeks of misery as organ by organ slowly fail. And intent, which only makes the difference between Murder One and a lesser charge.
As an emergency room social worker, I occasionally had to intervene with parents refusing treatment. I recently retired, but recall the last time this happened. The patient had an illness akin to Leukemia, and needed a blood transfusion. One of the parents was a JW, or some other religion that tries to block blood transfusions. He or she wanted us to use a procedure involving storing her blood and then re-administering it. I googled this and confirmed my impression that this applied only to situations involving surgery. If both parents had resisted transfusion, believe me, I would have had no hesitation in reporting them to the State Central Registry for Child Abuse and Maltreatment. Fortunately, the other parent consented to what was necessary.
By the way, Mark Twain wrote an extremely funny book about Christian Science. See http://www.skeptic.de/b/0031.php. He was extremely scathing about Mary Baker G. Eddy, the fraud who founded it.
Urging the state to firmly grab that emerging third rail of politico-religion is dangerous. I will be interested in how this pans out…
It’s that and more, and less. IMO it’s about laziness, fear, control and guilt.
People are too lazy to work at being a ‘good citizen’. They would rather have someone feed them some predigested pablum than actually sift through what is happening with their own mental abilities. They don’t question and don’t think. I remember having arguments in the driveway with the Jehovah’s witnesses about the evils of technology and after discussing the pluses and minuses if technology and the world we live in could usually be counted on for a slam dunk win by pointing to their car and their watches as instances where technology is greatly beneficial to humanity. They eventually stopped showing up.
Fear over not filling in or making it to heaven. Fitting in is a major drive for most people. Heck, there are even people who feel that by not fitting in, they are. The heaven bit is just daft. What if there isn’t a heaven? A catholic stayed married to an absolute world class asshole because the pedophile pope says that getting divorced from the jerk will bar them from heaven. I’d say ‘Screw heaven, get me the hell out!’ Control because religion is very good at population control The fundie ministers say ‘go forth and prosper’ and vagina clown cars are sprouting up everywhere. See also: Fear. Guilt as described by a Jewish friend is a ‘wasted emotion but powerful when brought out in others’. Ahh but guilt, or some amalgam of fear and control brings the catholic out of their den to confess their sins, do a ‘penance’ and just jump right back into it all over again.
See, Modern society is messy and complicated. It’s full of choices and decisions and pain. It’s much easier to float through on someone else’s thoughts but you miss all the scenery and the wonderful experience of totally screwing up and facing the band…
As I am realizing I’m getting older I’m thinking of things I haven’t done in my life. To let fear get me down or someone else control me and stop me from doing what I feel I have to do on my one and only trip round is just stupid, tragic and sad. Granted I’m not going to go out and kill someone but I do want to touch the Eiffel tower and see Stonehenge and the great wall and Mnt. Fiji. Sitting around worshiping superstition isn’t going to do it.
I feel sorry for those whose lives are controlled by others warped views of the world. I also fear that those people also breed.
Anyone seen the movie ‘Idiocracy’? Interesting premise and the extrapolation of Bush and the religious right? Hmm…
Bugger… I guess my second point was that I don’t think it was a revolt in modernity that caused it, I just think it’s a general dislike of society and a reaction to the demonizing of ’smart people’ and all that knowledge tends to bring to the equation like questions and stern looks and shaking heads and input from the ‘real world’.
I can honestly say, as the mom of a beautiful 10 year old autistic daughter, that I am far happier to have my wonderful healthy girl, than to have risked what could have happened to her had she not been vaccinated or had regular checkups.
Did the vacines cause her autism, when she is the only child in either of our family histories to be autistic? I don’t know- frankly, I don’t care. After this many years as her mom, I’m past second-guessing the “hows and whys” of Jean’s autism. She is adored, loved, and a great person who amazes us on a daily basis.
My heart goes out for the family of this little girl; they made a series of choices I wouldn’t be able to make,are now paying for them, and will for the rest of their lives, regardless of whatever shakes out in the investigations to come.
Mary Kay, my mom’s sister and mother both contracted mild cases of polio; my entire LIFE I have listened to my mother bitch because she had to do all of her older sister’s chores!
One would think that sibling grudges would die by the time you’re in your 60’s, but not yet!
Fascinating how sharon defends parental rights that treat children like property—and that leads to death—but doesn’t trust grown women to have sex without punishment.
I think all of this “slippery slope” stuff of not wanting the state to intervene in childcare decisions is ultimately just enabling child abuse and child-killing. There’s obviously a big question of where you draw the line, but there’s no question there’s a line and a side of it where the state is not only entitled but duty-bound to intervene.
Beat your kids till they get broken bones and chronic bruising? The state intervenes. Believe that you’re such a careful driver you’ll never have accidents and let your kids ride without seatbelts or carseats? The state intervenes? Claim that God will see to your kid’s calorie intake? The state intervenes.
And juvenile diabetes is so effing treatable, at such low cost (free to the parents, a few bucks a day to the insurance company or the state) that this abuse makes me see red. Lock ‘em up, and make sure they don’t ever have another kid. (Or would that be violating something?)
The reason parents are in charge of their children’s medical care is because parents have a more vested interest in the well-being of their children than busybodies or the state.
When treatment for a life-threatening condition is prescribed and when the parents refuse to administer it, then your statement becomes false. In these cases, it is the medical professional who has the interest in the well-being of the patient and requires the state to intervene in order to properly treat his patient, because consent laws prevent proper treatment. It is the state, of course, which created the original laws that allow the parents to refuse treatment for their children in the first place.
okay, as a social worker:
SHARON: YOU’RE WRONG.
Medical neglect, get it?
Arun- that was an assholic comment. You deserve all of the ridicule you’ve received for that
one.
I cannot be a relativist in the face of neglect or abuse of a child. Adults can refuse medical care for themselves, all they want. You have children- you have a responsibility. A line has to be drawn somewhere. If people allowed to excuse medical neglect from a religious standpoint, then where does that slippery slope stop?d
Amanda: The distrust in medicine, I think, is a revolt against the modernity that brought us women’s lib and the civil rights movement.
Or just perception bias. Bad news gets reported and sticks in the mind, all the more if its extremely yucky, what bad news about medical cases tends to be.
A nearby clinic had a series of bad mess-ups in their radiation therapy department in the 80s. I know one of the victims, who lost use of one arm and both his hands. So when a relative had to go there for radiation therapy in the 00s, the whole familiy was in a panic. The clinic may have treated thousands of patients successfully (my relative is well, too), but the pictures of the victims are remembered and everyone feels that radition therapy is an unsafe technique administered by fools using faulty machines, and unless the alternative is certain death, better avoid it.
Also, the power of belief is best demonstrated in people’s unlimited capability for lying to themselves. If, as bekabot suggests, one of the reasons the parents didn’t take the child to a doctor because they could not afford it, I’d bet that they were utterly, totally convinced that whatever the girl was suffering from couldn’t possibly be serious.
bekabot @ comment #15,
You have a very interesting point. One thing at which we as humans are very good is self-justification and in general knowing on which side our bread is buttered. As Ike pointed out in his (now famous) farewell speech, when there is an incentive for politicians to support the military-industrial complex, they will and will come up with sophisticated justifications (and believe them!) for what is really self-serving behavior. Indeed, in any context outside of religiosity and going to war (and if you suggest this sort of thing about going to war to a conservative, they’ll label you a paranoid moonbat hippy), it is a constant observation of conservatives that people will behave in a self-justifying manner, etc (c.f. their rhetoric about various “agendas” and about “perverse effects” of government programs).
It is perfectly reasonable to think that somewhere, in the back of this couple’s mind, they really are afraid of the costs of medical care. But they don’t even realize this consciously — instead somewhere deep in their brains they’ve come up with the idea that God’ll just take care of things.
Bekabot- I appreciate your generous consideration that the cost of insurance was an issue for this family, I really do. But, the family cites their belief in a higher power, for how they handled the situation. I know it’s horrible, but we do sometimes need to resort to a “free-clinic”, or an emergency room. Sure, the bill might be something one ends up working to pay off for years- but when certain symptoms are present in children, we have an obligation to do whatever we can to assist the child.
yeah, sharon, you’re totally right. i mean, we as a society have no problem with parents beating and starving their children…after all, parenting philosophies are no business of the state. how dare we demand that they allow their kids to receive emergency medical care? and, it’s not like kids are people, or anything.
My distrust in the medical profession comes from having a view into it. One should go to it in the last resort and if nothing better is available. Yeah, tetanus, diphteria, measles, smallpox, polio have gone - but these are the accomplishments of earlier generations. You no more make Bush a better President by citing the New Deal.
BTW, I think America could have a much better medical system if it abolished the guild system that makes entry of doctors from abroad so much infinitely more difficult than it does engineers and business men. Some real competition would shake things up.
Yeah, tetanus, diphteria, measles, smallpox, polio have gone - but these are the accomplishments of earlier generations. You no more make Bush a better President by citing the New Deal.
Are you saying I should never go to any doctor (unless maybe it’s life or death) because that doctor did not personally cure any fatal diseases?
I’ve heard the expression “the perfect is the enemy of the good”, but WOW.
Personally, I don’t put my full trust in western medicine, and I don’t see the need to overmedicate based on everyday complaints. But when there’s a real problem? I’ll be calling my doctor, thanks.
BTW it’s not just the evil, evil MD’s who can make mistakes or lead people astray — for a long time I saw a nurse-midwife because I had some bad experiences with OB/GYNs and felt I didn’t need anything that “invasive”. Until the CNM botched my pap smear and sent me in for a biopsy for abnormalities that weren’t actually there. It was the MD who took one look, said “yeah, I’m not seeing anything here to biopsy…” and sent me home intact. Now that OB/GYN is my doctor.
The parents have been arrested and charged, it seems. Good.
paul @69…
I had a relative that worked for the state in child welfare and it would curl your toes what they went through.
There are lawyers and judges who just don’t give a damn. The lawyers would stand there and lie through their teeth and prosecutors that couldn’t give a shit and judges that just didn’t care.
Children were constantly returned to their abusive families over and over again. Women would whore around the counties and leave their kids in all sorts of nasty situations and not fear much interference. The shyster lawyers that assisted these evil families to retain their children were well known and in great demand from the families that could afford them. Hell, even certain cops wouldn’t do anything to help the children.
The emphasis was on ‘keeping the family together’ and at times that was a worse crime to keep the children in those situations.
They even had a severe fundamentalist sect that practiced ’spare the rod’ type of corporal punishment and even they had some protection from ‘teh state’.
In some areas the state carries as much power and threat as a drunk with a feather duster.
modem medicine!!
“Who gets to decide when a parent must seek medical care for a child?”
2 groups of people:
Group 1 - The public institutions that the parents choose to use. For example:
The reason why schools require vaccinations (many private as well as all public) is not because they are power-hungry or distrustful of parents, it’s because they have a responsibility to all the children in their care.
It isn’t about telling parents what they can and cannot do, it’s about letting parents know that there are health standards that will be upheld in their children’s schools. It’s about not being in violation of children’s rights. More specifically it’s not just about one particular child’s right to be healthy via vaccination (or not), it’s also about the rights of the children that are in greater danger if their classmates are not vaccinated.
Most vaccinations do not work 100% all the time. So, you need to have a certain % of the populace vaccinated for vaccinations to really do their job. More specifically, unvaccinated children are a danger to their classmates and especially to their classmate’s not-yet-old-enough-to-be-vaccinated younger siblings.
The issue of children’s right to a healthy school environment is especially important when one is talking about government run schools since it’s the government that has mandated universal education. If you are going to require that people do something, you have to ensure that it’s safe for them to do it (by the standards of the majority of the population).
Group 2 - a jury of their peers, when the child is injured or dies and the police/DA decide decide to charge the parents with neglect, child endangerment, etc.
As someone else already said: “I don’t think the argument is that the state should have interfered [before hand]. I think rather it’s that the parents have committed a serious crime…”
Charging the parents with a crime is interfering, in a sense, but not the pre-emptive the kind you are suggesting. And I don’t see where anyone is suggesting anything other than the system we have now, aside from better access to health care and a more educated and less fearful populace.
Charging the parents with a crime is interfering, in a sense,
Isn’t charging anyone with any crime “interfering”, in the same sense? I mean, crap, we wouldn’t want to “interfere” with that thug’s ability to knock over convenience stores, would we? If people are so scared of his gun that they’re willing to empty a cash register, why should the state get involved?
I think we left the idea that the patriarch has the right of life and death over his family behind back in the enlightenment.
We left the idea that criminalizing wife beating is “interfering” in a domestic affair behind back in the 60’s.
Why should it still be acceptable for parents to kill their children? A parent who allows their child to die due to knowing lack of medical attention is responsible for that death to exactly the extent that a parent who starves their child would be.
I’ve been a type one diabetic for over twenty years, since I was four. I hate these gibbering freaks with clenchjawed intensity.
When I was about 10, I was riding in the back of my parents car, and the radio had a story about a diabetic boy a few years younger than me, who had the sad luck to be raised by christian scientists. I looked at my parents, who had been injecting me two or three times a day for six years, and a great sadness filled me.
I hope those people never see daylight again.
uh… eh?
Of course there is a line between poor choices that may amount to medical neglect and abuse, but I don’t think in every situation it is as clear as some people on this thread would like to think. I think there is a much larger gray zone than many are comfortable admitting. I guess that’s why I prefer our current legal method of handling these situations on a case-by-case basis, weighing mitigating factors in determining what the just punishment would be.
I’m sort of curious how others feel about prosecuting women when unassisted childbirth goes terribly wrong. UCers tend to very much distrust the medical establishment, have a very strong belief that the female body will almost always birth a baby without complication if just left alone, and are taking significant risks with the life of the child by having no healthcare professionals to assist in the birth. Knowing of circumstances in which UC has gone wrong, in instances when signs of distress were evident for several hours, I wonder if people here would have supported prosecuting the parents for their baby’s death from a nuchal cord– something that is far less often fatal in hospital births. If not, where do you see the bright line that separates this type of medical “neglect” from criminal medical neglect?
I don’t think in every situation it is as clear as some people on this thread would like to think.
But I think this particular situation is relatively clear. If the parents knew she had Type I diabetes, and knew the ramifications of that, and did nothing, then yes, that’s textbook neglect, just as denying food, shelter, etc. would be.
If the parents were truly ignorant of her condition, or if there was some grey area in terms of whether she was really diabetic, what the best course of treatment was, etc. then, of course, that’s probably not criminal neglect but simply poor choices that unfortunately resulted in death.
I also don’t think that this particular situation’s level of black-and-white-itude has any bearing on slippery slope arguments like “what’s next, the government charging me with neglect because I didn’t have an accurate thermometer in the house?” Nobody in this thread is actually suggesting anything like that.
Regarding unassisted childbirth, I’m not sure whether you mean home birth assisted by a midwife, or truly unassisted birth. I personally think a woman who chooses to birth alone, with no professional advice, is putting the health of her child at risk, and if the baby dies because she knowingly chose not to get prenatal care or consult any kind of professional, yes, that’s heading dangerously close to criminal negligence. If you meant midwife-assisted home births — usually the midwife is trained to ‘make the call’ regarding the safety of birthing outside a hospital. I’ve never heard of one who’d suggest that a home birth go as planned despite the obvious need for allopathic intervention, and such people should IMO have the book thrown at them.
“If not, where do you see the bright line that separates this type of medical “neglect” from criminal medical neglect?”
Well, we could always go with the “outside the vagina” brightline. On account of, you know, the birthing medical decision involving the mother’s body and wellbeing as well as the baby’s, as opposed to a medical decision involving a totally born child physically affecting only that child. I don’t think anyone is suggesting criminalizing not donating an organ or tissue to your child if they need it and you can.
I’m sure Priscilla Presley would agree with you.
Exactly.
And you know what? I’d be more open to the idea of banning abortion if this were the case. (Barely a crack, but still.)
But the fact that it’s not even a hint of a slight possibility makes it very obvious that whether or not it’s really all about the babiez, there’s a definite hierarchy in whose is supposed to sacrifice portions of their body for the sake of their (potential) children - above and beyond the necessity/limitations of biology.
And that is just plain wrong in so very many ways.
Yes. My point was that interfering is sometimes a good thing.
People seem to forget that the government’s job is to “interfere.” Otherwise, what good would it do?
The question isn’t whether the government should ever interfere (which seemed to be what Sharon was asking), but when and how it should do so. After all, inaction is a choice as well.
And as another former child who might have died decades ago without the intervention of modern medicine, I say “interference” is more than called for in this case.
Weirdly enough (or maybe not so weirdly) I’ve never been swayed by the whole “but your mother could have aborted you!” argument. So what? It’s not like I would have noticed. But the thought of having to live life with a heart that wasn’t strong enough to let me live to adolescence - or play very often in the meantime - for no other reason than because whomever was responsible for me didn’t “believe” in modern medicine? And all the other adults thought that this was just a-ok? That thought fills me with rage and haunts my nightmares.
In fact, wanting to never have to tell a child of mine that his/her life will be just that, simply bc mommy doesn’t have the money for health insurance, is one of the many reasons why I support reproductive justice.
My point was that interfering is sometimes a good thing.
I know, I was trying to support your point, not argue. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
That’s why we have juries of one’s peers.
Charging and prosecuting these parents for neglect is the responsible thing to do. That child suffered. That child could have been saved form death and suffering from a quick visit to the ER.
If a jury decides these folks were really really stupid, they can acquit or nullify. If a jury decides these people were the assholes they appear to be, they convict them.
Claiming “it’s GAWD’S will” shouldn’t relieve you from worldly consequences.
Sharon & History Mom,
Let me share a different perspective. When I was a kid I had chronic, undiagnosed asthma. I frequently couldn’t breathe to the point where I would just go to “sleep.” When I would tell my parent I could breathe their response was that I was making trouble or trying to get attention or making them feel guilty. They premised my lack of medical attention on a combination of religious and financial reasons.
One day in school I had literally collapsed on the playground and woke up in the emergency room. My parents showed up furious that I had interrupted their day, certain I was faking. The doctor tried to explain that I had a serious condition and needed emergency treatment and on going care. My parents refused treatment saying it violated their religious beliefs…a handy excuse.
I was lucky. The ER doctor screamed down my father (no mean feat) and threatened to have me removed if they did not consent to treatment. Fortunately they did.
So here’s my point…all your concern for the rights of parents ignores one thing. Children deserve better, but have no way to get it. I deserved better parents. Parents who did have my best interests at heart. But I didn’t win that lottery. So what about me? What about the hundreds of thousands of children who are like me? Do we not matter because someone might require you to explain why you don’t want your kids to receive a certain medical treatment?
I’m worried about the other kids. Suppose they’re returned to their parents? Ok, they don’t have diabetes (now), but what happens when one of them gets appendicitis or Hodgkin’s disease or Grave’s disease–or even type I diabetes? Their parents “pray harder” and see another one of their kids die in horrible pain in front of them. I hope the 16 year old is old enough and independent enough to tell the parents to go screw themselves and call 911. And FSM any kids they have in the future…diabetes tends to run in families…
I posted this on Saturday as well and I was enraged.
It was. It just wasn’t clear if you understood what I was trying to say.
Probably more bc I was reading/writing in the middle of the night rather than bc of your phrasing.
All of you who are making excuses for what this family did — do you know what it looks like when someone dies of DKA?
From Wikipedia:
Late stage signs:
This girl died a tortured and painful death over weeks. They watched her die. They’re either severely mentally ill or criminally negligent.
Dr. Gregory House: [examining a baby] No fever, glands normal. Missing her vaccination dates.
Young Mother: We’re not vaccinating.
Dr. Gregory House: Think they don’t work?
Young Mother: I think some multinational pharmaceutical company wants me to think they work. Pad their bottom line.
Dr. Gregory House: Mmmm. May I?
[he takes the baby’s frog and starts to do a gribbit noise with the baby]
Young Mother: [whispered] Sure.
Dr. Gregory House: Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit.
[the baby laughs]
Dr. Gregory House: All natural, no dyes. That’s a good business - all-natural children’s toys. Those toy companies, they don’t arbitrarily mark up their frogs. They don’t lie about how much they spend in research and development. The worst a toy company can be accused of is making a really boring frog. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. You know another really good business? Teeny tiny baby coffins. You can get them in frog green or fire engine red. Really. The antibodies in yummy mummy only protect the kid for six months, which is why these companies think they can gouge you. They think that you’ll spend whatever they ask to keep your kid alive. Want to change things? Prove them wrong. A few hundred parents like you decide they’d rather let their kid die then cough up 40 bucks for a vaccination, believe me, prices will drop *really* fast. Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit, gribbit.
Young Mother: [Frightened] Tell me what she has.
Dr. Gregory House: [long suffering] A cold.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_sWp6VAqE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH_sWp6VAqE
Emily: Just to add to your post, I wanted to point out that when they say “abdominal pain” is a symptom, that doesn’t mean the sort of abdominal pain you get after Thanksgiving dinner. It means pain that can be mistaken for appendicitis, that is so severe that people kill themselves to avoid it. That’s the sort of abdominal pain these people allowed their daughter to go through, unnecessarily, before their eyes.
There are two distinct issues within this discussion:
1) If the practice of a parent’s religious beliefs contradicts the temporal health interests of a child, to what extent does the parent’s religious belief insulate him/her from the consequences and punishment of a secular legal authority?
2) To what extent does (or should) the state have the power to compel parents to seek or administer medical care to their children?
I think history_mom and sharon are addressing point #2, albeit from slightly different angles. But they both fundamentally assert that protection of children from the “problem” decision-making parents shouldn’t be the legal norm - that state intrusion via defining what parents must do is gross invasion of privacy and usurpation of parental authority, and should not be dependent on the diagnosis and suggestions of medical experts, irrespective of religious beliefs.
To deal with point #1, you have to deal with point #2 first. I suppose I should have reordered them for clarity. Sorry. Anyway, we have already acknowledged that the state has a compelling interest in usurping parental authority when it contradicts the health interests of children. Kids are taken from their parents and put in foster care all the time for just being in an abusive household, even if there’s no immediate risk to the child’s life. Parents are jailed for physically abusing their children and intentionally withholding basic needs (food and water). I’m sure there are other examples, but we’ve basically determined through years of case law that the state does have the right to supercede parental control of child-rearing. Of course there’s a slippery slope here, just as there is in any privacy issue. But I think that’s tempered by the overwhelming natural instinct among parents to do whatever is in the health interests of their children. It’s much more likely that parents will walk the earth to save their children’s lives than they are likely to do neglectfully or willfully ignore providing necessary medical care. In those cases where the abomination - parents who let their kids die - occurs, they should be judged in a court of law.
That being said, if a secular authority has grounds to usurp parental decisions and control for secular reasons, can it also do so if the reason for the parent’s behavior is a particular religious conviction? There is some precedent here, and other than a mild familiarity with Christian Scientists (the largest population of them in the US is here in Massachusetts) I really don’t know it well enough to discuss it.
The distrust in medicine, I think, is a revolt against the modernity that brought us women’s lib and the civil rights movement.
I don’t think that is the case here. These people clearly believed in giving up all temporal responsibility over life matters to God. This easily opens the hypocrisy can o’ worms. Did they not work to support themselves financially? Did they not care about the food they put in their bodies? Did they put on seatbelts when they rode in cars….? You can go on and on. But dogma’s never stood up well under the “complete fucking common sense” test.
Those who read NIH or Wikipedia, thank you for suffering to know the truth.
Editing Sharon’s quote shows the fallacy in her reasoning:
The reason parents are in charge of their children’s discipline is because parents have a more vested interest in the well-being of their children than busybodies or the state. That’s not to mean some parents aren’t misguided or won’t make decisions with which a majority of people disagree, like whipping with an extension cord or burning on a hot stove. After all, a fraction of parents disallow television in their homes because they don’t like it. And while others may think that’s crazy, it is still within parental rights to make those decisions.
{snip}
Any attempt to regulate how and when parents discipline their children will end with ridiculous and intolerable intrusion of the state on parental decision-making. Who gets to decide when a parent can whip or punch a child? Once a child’s misbehavior reaches a certain level? Using which sort of measuring device? What if said parent doesn’t have the preferred measuring device or doesn’t use it properly? The list of possible flaws in such reasoning are endless.
{snip}
But each parent still has the right and duty to make such determinations for their own family and expecting the State to step in is grossly intrusive.
Opoponax: Yes, I am referring to births in which there are no health professionals present (including midwives)– just the mother and (maybe) father.
Mickle: I do not think that UC quite falls neatly into the abortion angle– there is much that can go wrong in the immediate minutes after a child is born. Are you suggesting that in a UC, if the baby dies in the birth canal it would not be criminal negligence, but if it died shortly after exiting the birth canal it would be?
BTW, I am uncompromising about my support of abortion in any case and I take no position in general on whether UC should be prosecuted.
Kristen: I don’t dispute that there are circumstances in which the parents’ decisions should be superceded in order to save a child’s life. I am mainly disputing at what point this intervention should take place and in what circumstances. But I do dispute that the system should work any other way than it currently does; that is to say, I do think it should be handled case-by-case, where doctors need to have hearings/board review before they can supercede the parents wishes, and in cases where this cannot happen that the law determines whether parents should suffer any consequence for their behavior.
For others who think I am defending these specific parents, I am not and have not. I do not know enough details to make an absolute judgment, but I do tend toward viewing their conduct as negligent based on the last 48 hours of that child’s life.
Mold & Emily: I have no doubt that this child suffered an excruciating death. I do wonder, however, if parents (in general) were unaware of their child’s diabetes, would many of these symptoms be written off as a bad flu? In reading the symptom list, I can see how uneducated parents, unaware of their child’s medical condition, might not think the situation warranted a trip to the ER (especially if they were uninsured). Even the Kaussmaul breathing could be rationalized away as an attempt to keep nausea at bay (I know I breath very slow and deep when I am trying to prevent vomiting). To a trained eye or someone informed, the signs of DKA would have been unmistakeable.
Well, at first the S&SX would be confusing. But not 30+ days. And the perps had Intertube access so they could have looked up S&SX (signs & symptoms) on any number of websites. Gee, nearly every mom does this now.
Fascinating how sharon defends parental rights that treat children like property—and that leads to death—but doesn’t trust grown women to have sex without punishment.
Fascinating how Amanda, who has no children, thinks she understands the motivations of people who do, but can’t tell the difference between a foreseeable consequence of behavior and punishment.
It’s always interesting to watch the way a rational argument gets twisted and all the hysteria starts. But that’s really par for the course.
First of all, when I say that the reason parents have the latitude to make these sorts of decisions for their children is that parents have a vested interest in the kids, it isn’t saying that every parent on the planet always makes the best, most logical decisions concerning their children. However, despite what holly says, the state, by and large, allows parents to raise their children the way the parents want. Otherwise, you get all the horror stories about overzealous social workers who rip kids away from their loving families because said social worker is a nut. I would rather trust parents to make most decisions for their children than even the best intentioned stranger.
This isn’t to say that there shouldn’t be laws regarding neglect and abuse. I support such laws. My question concerned some of the more hysterical, “We gotta do something!!!!” mentality on display upthread. Again, who gets to determine when a parent has been neglectful? The lines are quite fuzzy and sometimes drawn in ways many people won’t like, but it is a fine line to cross when you are discussing the intersection of religion, freedom, duty, and obligation.
As for the rabbit trail about vaccines, I wasn’t saying that vaccines cause autism but that some people think vaccines cause autism, which is why they avoid getting their children vaccinated. This isn’t saying I agree with their statement, anymore than the people who tried to say I was endorsing or excusing child abuse. The fact is, parents will make a lot of choices that others dislike. Some seem more about personal taste (do you let your 11-year-old watch R rated movies?) and others seem more about safety (do you let your 15-year-old stay out at 2 a.m.?). Regardless, most parents try to do the best for their children, which is why, after all, they are charged with the responsibility for their children in the first place.
Driving, hunting, professional pursuits are all licensed and one usually has to pass a test of knowledge and proficiency. Parenting requires neither. In the retail world, we watch GawdFearin’ parents hit their kids with the same motion a boxer uses, leave the little ones outdoors sans clothing, and feed tots materials with huge amounts of sugar and few nutrients. Oh we drop dimes on your @sses frequently.
We have stricter requirements on pet ownership than on the most beloved of all ‘Merican icons, the Parent. Parents don’t have to be able to read, keep themselves or the children clean, or even be productive. The lowliest mouthbreather can meet the standard.
So, when the cretin murphles, “I’se PARENT”, I see little to have respect for or to defer to. The proof is in the results. And, if you think I’m cranky, try the burnouts from your local Child Services dept.
“Parents don’t have to be able to read, keep themselves or the children clean, or even be productive. The lowliest mouthbreather can meet the standard.”
I vaguely remember hearing about some movie that used that as a premise…
While I agree entirely that there was some serious neglect going on in this case — I can say from experience that it’s easy to miss the symptoms as they present themselves. I had a housemate learn she was diabetic by losing consciousness when her sugars hit 900. Luckily there was someone else in the house to call 911 when it happened.
Looking back on the lead-up, the symptoms were there — but discounted. Excessive thirst? Sure, but it was also 90 degrees out and we ran the A/C as little as possible to keep the electric bills down. Lack of appetite? Who wants to eat when it’s 90 degrees out? Sluggish? We were all sluggish in the heat. Trouble breathng? Her sinuses acting up again.
It was scary as anything, but she survived. I went to the diet-and-nutrition training with her afterwards, since I was the household’s main cook, and learned to count carbs and all that.
But if nobody had been home when she collapsed — she might not have made it.
history_mom
What the hell is UC?
(and why are you mentioning it in a comment directed at me?)
UC = unassisted childbirth. That is, childbirth without professional assistance (midwife, doctor, etc.), sometimes without aid of any sort.
Diabetic onset is not the same as DKA. Many ‘Mericans are diabetic and are unaware as the symptoms don’t present. Well, except for the fatness and no exercise. Anyhow, if you want to really go witout sleep, read up on the pre-insulin diabetes. This is what the little child went through.