I am saddened to report the following tragedy as referenced below, which was published as a news item on the first page on Google News today:


Parents Pick Prayer Over Docs; Girl Dies

by Associated Press.


http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gy_FocuLcPyslOqVeaOFan8yo7eQD8VM3A680


I would like to begin this with a moment of silence, to remember the life that was wasted so foolishly.

Please do not post responses without having done so.

Thank you.

I am keeping my intro short, out of respect and deference.

Now that several hours have passed as many, many moments of silence were offered respectfully by hopefully all of you, please confirm your acknowledgement of this tragedy that could have been avoided by simple medical care, by replying to this topic and making a difference by educating the public about the dangers of blind faith and prayer.


Thank you.

I was appalled when I read in a news article yesterday about the child's death . I was even more appalled when I learned the following:

I understand that one year of the weapons budget for the western world could give ongoing food, water and education to all the children in Africa. Will the world give up one year and manage it?

Every day children around the world including in America are left without adequate medical care because they can't afford the medical costs or don't have insurance. But it continues

The use of bio-fuel will cause conflicts in low-cost food delivery and a rise in prices of standard food products. Many of these are already doubled. Children will starve or suffer malnutrition but the world will continue to use bio-fuel.

All over the world including Western Countries children are exposed to chemicals from local factories, manufacturing processes, pest extermination and even kitchen chemicals. Nobody knows what many of the combinations will do but reasonable expectation is that they will cause cancer. In the case of the mobile homes offered by FINA (is that the acronym) for the victims of hurricane Katrina there were up to 3000 times the dangerous dose of formaldehyde in homes known to be housing children.

Just off the top off my head, Did I mention the 500,000 who are believed to have died of starvation and lack of medicines while the first Iraq blockade was in place?

Zippy, of course all child abuse deaths are horrible. Discussing the horror of a child's death that results from religious fanaticism doesn't diminish the horror of any other case of child abuse, and discussing this death is no more or less sensitive than discussing any other. This happens to be a religion forum, so this particular death is relevant to the subject under discussion. I actually feel for these parents, as they have probably been encouraged to believe that their child's death is a result of some defect in their faith. At this moment, they are probably beating themselves up over it, not because they didn't seek medical treatment for the girl, but because they think they failed in their attempt to perfect their faith and bring their child back to health through the power of prayer alone. The mother was associated with an organization, americaslastdays.org, whose preachings on faith healing run along those lines. If these people had prayed at their child's bedside while doctors administered lifesaving treatment, no one would be discussing this tragedy. The needless death of this child SHOULD be used to prevail on state legislatures to repeal the laws that condone these tragedies. Instead, they should be passing legislation that allows people who encourage parents to watch their children die for want of medical care to be charged with homicide. This child's death comes little more than three weeks after the death in Oregon from pneumonia of a fifteen-month-old, whose parents belonged to the Followers of Christ Church, a church notorious for the number of its children who die in the absence of medical care.

I am probably off base a bit with the way I think on this but my point was that people make the decision to limit care based on all sorts of reasons. Insurance for instance. It is still limiting care and the child will die because of it. It will not be seen in the same light as the religious death because it will not be presented in that light by a community that has come to overlook the insurance death.

That death will just be sad. If the people in the Fema (thats it) homes start dying there will be all sorts of enquiries but someone made a decision to let children face death who did not need to.

The death of the children in the article is very sad but invokes a quandry of legal and moral issues. Do we intervene for instance?

Intervention sets up a precedent for other interventions. How about taking Mormon children from polygamous marriages because they are considered to be in danger morally in the house where many women have one man. Do we intervene in countries where young women are given to husbands. After all in our culture it is kidnap and possibly rape if they are not happy about the deal.

Then there is the intervention where someone living in a distant forest might be considered to be endangering children by taking them away from reasonable access to doctors. Children who die in that setting might be considered to be dead by misadventure but surviving children, organically grown in clean and low stress air might actually have a better survival rate in later life.

I've never put much stock in slippery slope arguments, sundog. Anyway, you certainly have a point when it comes to children dying for a lack of health insurance. I'm appalled by that too and have no trouble speaking out and saying so. I guess it's possible to find all kinds of rationalizations for letting children die: we can't afford to save them; their parents didn't want to save them; their culture doesn't think it's important to save them. I'm not much impressed by any of them--not when the children could be saved by a simple medical intervention. And yes, we do intervene when the dying child is within our jurisdiction. We decided a long time ago that as a society we have a responsibility to the most helpless among us. Respecting people's beliefs is one thing; letting them kill their children over them is something else again.

If you really want to get into the gray areas (and here is where I sabotage my own argument--wish I'd stop doing that), read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It "explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy." (from the cover copy)

Slippery slope arguments I guess you have a point there. If I see that book I will read it and I will try to remember to have a look around. I devour literature so reading another book will not damage my schedule at all. (get up, eat, eat, eat, sleep, get up )

Who knew you and I were on identical schedules? I'm surprised we haven't run into each other on the proverbial street that's paved with dreams, but then again I guess that's exactly what we have done.

I was probably hiding in a corner with my head over a bowl I don't like to share my scooby snacks

Edited post above. Please read again from the bottom half section down. Thank you.

Hi, guys.

Here's some more detail on the story.

Fox News

Cheers and God bless,
enegue