If you choose to reject actual reality and substitute your own instead, at least have the decency to leave your own children out of your little fantasy world so they won’t be killed by your own stupidity.
I’ll never understand these people. AIDS is the resultant condition of a destroyed immune system, and HIV destroys the immune system. The two go hand in hand. How someone can deny that is totally beyond me.
As far as the child goes, it is indeed tragic, but no more or less than the people who refuse medical treatment on the grounds that “God will provide”. He already has, morons. They’re called “doctors”.
Stories like this remind me of the old joke where a man is stuck in the water after the ship he’s on sinks. He prays for God to save him. A ship comes to pick him up and he declines because “God will save him”. He does the same thing with a helicopter and then refuses to signal a circling airplane for the same reason. He then drowns.
Up in Heaven he asks God why He didn’t save him. God says “I sent a boat, a helicopter, and an airplane. What the hell else do you want?”
It is more tragic, because the girl didn’t choose her fate. If someone refuses medical treatment for themselves and dies, that’s stupid, not tragic. This girl was sacrificed on the altar of her mother’s fanaticsm.
It’s widely known that AIDS is a huge problem here in South Africa. What doesn’t help is that President Mbeki has openly questioned (though not outright denied) the link between HIV and AIDS, and has even gone so far as to insinuate that HIV drugs might cause AIDS. In a country where estimates claim 40% of people between 25 and 30 years old are infected; over 30% of pregnant women are HIV positive, and 11% of the entire country are HIV positive, it’s staggering, and a dangerous stance to take.
I see where you misunderstood me. It helps if I wirte what I mean. I was referring to the Christian Scientists that deny treatment to themselves and their children on that basis.
There are several religious communities that refuse medical treatment for their children on violently stupid religious grounds. Unfortunately the courts tend to incorrectly rule that this is a valid expression of religious freedom instead of criminal negligence.
I’m aware of that; I see no real difference. If the adults choose to die, that’s their business; I don’t think the parents has a right to sacrifice their children like that. Politics or religion, the motivation doesn’t matter.
Yeah, well, the “CIA made AIDS/HIV to kill all the black people” myth is really popular, and given that people believe that wholeheartedly it’s not surprising to see that they would reject the drugs on the basis that they’re just being administered to finish the job. Mbeki’s personal opinion is that it’s caused by malnutrition and poverty, equally insane but no less plausible to people who don’t know better.
There’s nothing quite like a pervasive urban legend to gum things up.
What an utterly arrogant asshole that woman is. Writing about her daughter’s death she had this to say:
You egotistical dumbshit, maybe your daughter died because all your money and attention and spacious living quarters and carefully prepared organic meals didn’t change the fact that you’re a FUCKING LUNATIC?
She’s clearly the front runner for worst mother of the year.
The doctors who “treated” her daughter should lose their licenses.
I don’t mean this question in a flippant Darwin award sense, but in a genuine “is there any way to stop it” sense.
Say that a child has a disease and needs treatment. The parents refuse the treatment. The courts take the child and hand her over to doctors for treatment. The child survives.
Does that child grow up to become a member of the same community as her parents? Do children who are forcibly treated turn their backs on the religions or ignorance than endangered them, or do they return to it when able and embrace it and have their own children to whom they refuse medical treatment?
Its’ bad enough when a Tom Cruise does something that stupid, but an elected offical? Its’ enough to make me want to build a snipers’ nest in the Cape Town book depository. Okay, build a book depository, then a snipers’ nest.
This is one of the reasons why some courts have not forced parents to give medical treatment to their children, because it impacts their relationship with their community. If parents have been shunned out of a community for breaking one of their rules, sometimes they’ll find themselves with no marketable skills (e.g. Amish) and no outside connections and it’s impossible to build a life without either one of those. It’s a tough situation; on the one hand parents have the right to rear their children any way they see fit, and wouldn’t forcing medical treatment on them infringe on that? It’s also a kind of cultural hegemony. However, I’m not sure if I’m willing to sacrifice lives for a culture that has such little regard for life itself that it would deny medical care to a child.
However, those cases are for people who are connected with some kind of established religion or lifestyle, not just a random crazy like the woman in the OP. The odds of having an HIV baby go down to only 2% if you take medication while you’re pregnant. She should be put in jail, or at the least have her other kid taken away.
It’s like the old phrase, “My right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins”. A subculture’s freedom ends when ohter people start getting hurt. Since children don’t have much choice in the matter, they get included in the “other people” catagory.
In the UK, they’re more likely to get made wards of court.
Even if it means waking up a judge at 3am.
I’ll play devil’s advocate here for a second.
Now, I don’t question that this woman is a complete nut-ball responsible for the death of her daughter, and I wouldn’t oppose using legal means to compel her to provide treatment to her daughter, but I will argue that parents should have a general right to make decisions regarding the welfare of their children.
A lot of pediatric oncology cases, some rare types of dwarfism, metabolic disorders, etc. leave a lot of examples where modern medical technology can only offer treatments with marginal life-span increases, tremendous expense, and a decline in quality of life for the patient in a lot of measures. Just because doctors have a treatment available doesn’t mean that it fits with the values of a child’s parents. If we decide that a three year old isn’t mature enough to make their own decisions in relation to medical care, why should the medical community necessarily have better answers or better, “values,” than the parents?
One hundred years ago in this nation, an enormous portion of the population died as toddlers. People understood that infant mortality was a part of being human, accepted these losses, and went on with life. If some people still choose to live this way or don’t want to violate some sort of religious rule for possible safety, then frankly that is their decision to make.
I was just reading something about that today. Did I read correctly that the head of your public health system was quoted as saying that he felt a diet high in olive oil and lemon juice will help prevent AIDS? If true, that is some very scary shit, man.
I would recommend a diet of whale blubber, myself. I mean, just look at the rate of HIV infection among the Innuit
Fuck that! People can choose whatever lifestyle they want for themselves, including playing russian roulette every morning before breakfast.
But they’ve no right to endanger the life of others. Kids aren’t their parent’s property.
I’m sorry, but that is complete bullshit. HIV is no picnic, but if this child had been tested-hell, if her mother had been treated, and not breastfed, she would be alive today. This isn’t the 1980s anymore-AIDS is still deadly, but we have come a long ways, relatively speaking, in treatment of HIV, and it need not necessarily be a death sentence.
Trying to press her bullshit theory that HIV is not linked to AIDS, that treatment for HIV causes AIDS, well, she’s not just hurting herself, she killed her child.
She’s a stupid, vile cunt of the highest order, and I’m not going to defend her by talking about how people have a right to choose their own lives. Yes, they do-but not at the expense of another person. Even their own children. If a child has a treatable condition, I believe it is that parent’s duty to ensure their child is treated. The fact that they’re still trying to deny she had AIDS speaks to their selfish, deluded agenda.
I agree with you in this case, and in most every other case where a life-threatening condition is at issue, but if we say that parents must provide medical care for every condition their child may have, won’t that lead to a lot of difficult situations, and possibly less freedom for the rest of us? I mean, look at the (well-deserved) ruckus kicked up when Bush wanted to psychologically screen every child in America for mental disorders. Should a parent be compelled to put their kid on Ritalin because it might fractionally improve the quality of their life? What about if a kid has an allergy, but instead of going the medical-advice route and giving them Claritin, the parents choose to avoid triggers, give their kid a healthy diet that will lessen their allergies, and take their chances on an allergy attack? I could see a slippery slope here.
I wish there was a way to differentiate between mandatory medical care that needs to be given to prevent death, and the mandatory use of lifestyle drugs which won’t cause death if they’re withheld. Knowing my government, I’m almost prepared to say that tragic cases like this are the price we pay for medical freedom for our families. But then, if government was rational, we wouldn’t even have to deal with that.