I just wanted your opinion since you seem to believe very strongly in the parents’ right to do as their religion commands.
Actually, dougie_monty seems to believe very strongly in the parents’ right to do as his religion commands.
Actually, dougie_monty seems to believe very strongly in the parents’ right to do as his religion commands.
You would have parents do as your religion commands? No more than you would want the butcher to repair your shoes.
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Way to not answer my question, Dougie.
Can I take a crack at that, Flymaster? Feel free to poke holes in this (as I am sure will happen).
I think the distinction that can be made between people blowing up buildings/killing brown-eyed children in the name of God, and those refusing medical treatment for their children, is the idea of intent to do harm. Killing for religious reasons (obviously) involves a willingness to do so. I don’t think that parents who refuse medical treatment are intending to harm their children in any way. If their child is ill, I doubt they’re thinking, “Eh, it’s just a kid, I can make more.” Rather, the intent is to restore their child to health without the limitations and fear incumbent on relying on doctors and medicine.
Some background: Honestly I don’t really know how to talk about this without getting into the theology, but I can tell you that I grew up happy, healthy, and extremely well-cared-for in Christian Science household. Both my parents and all of my extended family are also Christian Scientists; the adults are (and the kids are on their way to being) very well-educated, intelligent and thoughtful people. I see others have the impression that refusing medical treatment is the result of blind stupidity, but in my experience it was always done with careful consideration, love, and a desire to do what they believe is right. There is nothing sheep-like about it, and the church does not require that people rely on prayer if they do not feel capable of dealing with a problem, nor is there any “peer pressure” to do so. Everyone is free to pursue whatever course of action they feel is most appropriate. Which leads me to this:
I do struggle with the idea of children dying because of the religious beliefs of their parents, especially when it’s because of an easily treatable ailment. Speaking again from personal experience, Christian Science is a tough one to get to understand, with some concepts flat-out inconceivable to a little kid. Parents who don’t feel capable of relying on prayer for their children shouldn’t try to do so, and those who try and don’t see results should probably consider other alternatives, however difficult that might be. That said, my family’s healthy. I’m healthy. I’ve been healed of quite a few problems, including one incurable disease. My cousin broke his arm and his cast was off, bone completely fine, in one week, with X-rays and a doctor’s statement to prove both.
I guess the point of all this is that I definitely feel protective of religious freedom. While tragedies certainly can and do occur, so do healings, and in many cases those healings happen where medicine would be helpless.
It took me weeks to get up the nerve to write all this. Be kind if you can. Thanks.
While I respect your opinion, I think you’re still missing the point.
If a parent refused to allow their child to eat because a voice told them that the American government had been poinsoing their food and was trying to kill the child, and that the only way for him to live was for him to never eat anything at all, the child would be taken away from the parents. I don’t see, at all, how this is any different from your view. They aren’t intending to do harm, they’re trying to stop harm.
In the same way, my hypothetical is the same thing. The parents would not only be saving the world from the evil that is brown eyes, they would also be cleansing the child of this horrible sin and allowing him to enter heaven, as well as fulfulling their good Flymasterian traditions, getting themselves into heaven.
ANY time that you deny a child the right to life, you are guilty of neglect. I see no way to argue otherwise. However, if I am given a convicing argument, I will concede. I haven’t seen one yet.
My main gripe, now, is the fact that Dougie seems to be willingly avoiding my question, as though the knows I have him beat, and he doesn’t want to face up to it. I’m aware that he doesn’t have regular internet access, but he was on today, and ignored my question, which is posted in 2 places on this thread.
What if the state takes the kid away and the kid dies because hes alergic to that treatment. The state doesent know everything. We do know that someone will die without food. However on the same foot the #1 cause of death in america is mis diagnosis. Giving people power is a bad idea.
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Alergic to being taken away by the state?
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Maybe not, but why does a parent know everything about medicine - more than a doctor - because an ancient text has some verses which may or may not touch on something, and that may or may not be accurate?
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Yeah… And?
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Cite, please.
[quotte]Giving people power is a bad idea.
[/QUOTE]
Giving people WHAT power is a bad idea? How so? I am confused as to what side, if any, you are taking here.
Yer pal,
Satan
http://homepages.go.com/~cmcinternationalrecords/devil.gif
TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Three weeks, two days, 23 hours, 47 minutes and 54 seconds.
959 cigarettes not smoked, saving $119.95.
Life saved: 3 days, 7 hours, 55 minutes.
Medicine is all about calculated risk. Let’s say a kid needs a transfusion, and we know that there’s a 0.1% chance he will die of a transfusion reaction if we give it to him, and a 99.9% chance he will recover completely. On the other hand, if we don’t give it to him, there’s about an 80% chance he will die and another 15% that he will live with hypoxic brain damage, but 5% that he will fully recover. Can you say that it is in the best interest of the child to withhold treatment?
This is an attitude toward medicine that pisses me off. Doctors and medical personnel don’t know everything, and they should be the first to tell you that. But when it comes to treating illnesses, they know a hell of a lot more than you do. (It could just be that I’ve been in the library studying pathology like a bitch all day.)
What about putting a gun to the child’s head and pulling the trigger? Hey, it might not kill him. Should I be able to do that if God tells me to?
You seem to have misspelled “heart disease”. Medical error is said to contribute to enough deaths to place it between #4 and #6, but that is a different story–those are accidental. We’re talking about willful refusal of the proper treatment.
What?
Dr. J
Beadalin said:
Well, then James Randi might have a million dollars for you. I encourage you to seek it out and prove both of your claims. (Incidentally, what incurable disease did you have?)
Asmodean – others have already said what I was going to say. But just one more question: Where do you get some of the nonsense you post here?
There are very good reasons to believe that the misdiagnosis/medical error" statistics that have appeared in the media are dodgy at best. Take a look at:
Apparently quite a few Dopers are angry that Jehovah’s witnesses will not accept blood transfusions, for themselves nor for their children. The Dopers’ presumption seems to be that transfusion is ipso facto invariably life-saving; I can adduce a number of examples in which it would not be. (Compare Cecil’s own comments on Dr. Charles Drew, fatally injured in a car crash, who would have died transfusion or no.) As I have noted elsewhere, the “trendy” medical treatment 200 years ago was bloodletting–witness George Washington and Lord Byron. Who knows what will be trendy 200 years from now?
At any rate, Jesus said, “He who loses his life for my sake will save it.” Abraham had this kind of faith too, when he was all ready to cut the throat of his own son Isaac–tied on an altar for sacrifice at God’s order. Abraham apparently reckoned that He could bring the boy back from the dead, if necessary–not take him to heaven (See the 11th chapter of Hebrews.) The Witness children’s parents have faith in the resurrection.
Someone posting to this thread said, “suppose I found a book dated ‘1000 A.D.’ …” Sorry, I won’t bite. That’s like saying, If I had eighteen wheels I’d be a bus.
I think I’ll wait until you can find an ancient manuscript that does not use modern indicia like “1000 A. D.,” which isn’t correct anyway (like the old joke about the archaeologist finding a coin with the date 50 B. C.) And then we’ll see if your manuscript passes muster with competent palaeontologists.
Until then, the 15th chapter of Acts is the final word.
d_m said:
How many times do we have to explain this? We don’t care if adults want to kill themselves! It’s when you start killing your children that we have a problem. Get it?
Again, I believe you have every right to refuse any medical treatment for yourself, no matter how foolish I think your decision to be. You do not have the right to refuse treatment for your child.
I doubt anyone believes transfusion is invariably life-saving. Certainly, many people die despite receiving a transfusion. A tiny minority die as a result of receiving a transfusion (though if they needed a transfusion, they likely would have died without it, anyway). Nevertheless, it is preposterous to suggest that transfusion never a medically sound idea, or that transfusion hasn’t saved lives.
Do you honestly believe that transfusion is nothing more than a fad, and that it has no body of scientific evidence to prove its utility?
No, your interpretation of Acts is the final word.
Holly said:
Well, he’s tried every other rationalization in the book, why not that one as well?
Posted by dougie_monty:
Here’s a link to the column in question: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_073.html
Here’s a quote from that column:
Emphasis is mine.
If you STILL don’t understand why a transfusion would not have helped in THAT particular case, (His injuries disrupted his circulation; additional blood would not have helped because that new blood couldn’t get where it was needed.) then I don’t know what more I can say.
dougie, you see, in this day and age we have something we like to call evidence-based medicine. Back in the old days, we did a lot of things (bloodletting, leeches) without knowing how they worked, or really even if they worked. Medicine has come a long way since the Civil War, though, and now we take the time to observe the things we do and see what happens.
Not only do we know how treatments work, but we understand the possible complications and how likely they are to happen. If someone comes in who is bleeding out, we can say to a fair certainty how likely he is to have a transfusion reaction vs. how likely he is to suffer brain damage or die if left untreated. Biostatisticians have all sorts of calculations they like to make–things like risk-benefit ratios, number needed to treat, etc. It all comes down to one thing–most of the time, we can predict the outcomes of treatment vs. non-treatment.
Of course, the irony is probably not lost on very many people here that you dismiss modern medicine by comparing it to that of 200 years ago, and instead base such an important medical decision on an ambiguously translated and interpreted passage in a 2,000-year-old book. If you want to do that, go ahead. I think your children should be allowed to grow old enough to make that decision on their own, or perhaps to recognize that any God who would let a child die of a treatable condition due to some hang-up he has about blood probably isn’t worth spending Sunday morning with.
Oh, and yes, a transfusion is absolutely contraindicated in SVC syndrome. It’s not hard to see why–blood coming back from the brain is blocked, you give more blood, it backs up in the brain, swelling, hemmorhage–probably would have given him a stroke. We know that a transfusion is unlikely to help him and that it would probably in fact hurt him, so we wouldn’t give him one. I don’t really get your point, dougie–“I knew a guy who had end-stage emphysema, tertiary syphilis, twelve different cancers, and a severed head. If they had given him a transfusion, he would have died anyway.”
Dr. J
Dougie…Here’s a big word for you: Hypothetical. It means “made up, not true, but hey, what if it was?”
Do I have to plug every hole in my story? Just answer the question.
Ok…ready? the book is dated “Blue dog peyote square”
It has passed muster with Archeologists (they study old shit) and hell, let’s toss in a few ancient cultural experts (I beleive they’re called anthropologists) just for shits and giggles. Ok…my question is legit. NOW answer it.
Simply put Dougie, the argument can be distilled down to a few facts.
Transfusion saves lives. When deemed medically necessary, transfusions preserves lives far in excess of the very rare times than it causes harm. The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable by anyone with reason. No amount of hedging or tales of the exceptions can refute the statistical evidence.
The practices allowed and disallowed by the leadership of your church are haphazardly applied by picking and choosing certain elements of blood that are and are not admissable. Let’s be clear here: There is no hedging in the scripture about certain parts of blood being allowed and others not. Interpret what the verse means as you like, blood means blood.
You are NOT refusing transfusion on the basis of faith in Jesus. Millions of people as devout as you have received transfusions. You are refusing transfusions on the basis of faith in the interpretation of a single line of scripture by your church leaders. An interpretation, I feel compelled to point out, that is refuted by the rest of the world. It is an awful shame that children, who really should be able to believe that their parents are guarding their well being, are being sacrificed on the altar of faith in some very HUMAN and FALLIBLE chucrch officials.
OK, I hope I’m not out of line here, because I haven’t read this thread lately, but I thought the news item could help show the dangers of refusing medical treatment.
Reuters, Oddly Enough Headlines
Thursday May 4 8:04 AM ET
Four Die Waiting for ‘Miracle’ Cures
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Four Kenyans, including two young children, died at a religious meeting while they waited for miracle cures from a visiting American evangelist, a local paper said Wednesday.
Police told the Kenya Times the four had been released from a hospital to be cured at Benny Hinn’s ``Miracle Crusade’’ in the Kenyan capital Sunday, but they died before Hinn could pray for them.
Ten other people suffered serious injuries including broken jaws after falling from trees they had climbed to get a view of the American preacher, who was reported to have attracted up to a million people to his two-day weekend meeting.
Hinn regularly preaches to vast audiences across the United States and his shows are broadcast on Kenya’s terrestrial religious channel every night.
Preachers promising miracle cures from ailments ranging from AIDS to blindness have become increasingly popular in recent years in Kenya, a country where health care is out of the reach of many ordinary people and living standards have been gradually falling for years.
It makes my skin crawl every time I hear the terms “interpret” or “interpret literally” concerning anything quoted from the Bible. Case in point:
Sorry, I won’t buy it, no matter how high the vote (“the rest of the world”) is stacked against me. I don’t accept “Vox populi, vox dei.” And on the subject of “interpreting literally” (which I take as a cop-out synonym for “taking seriously”), consider the 6th Commandment (murder), the 8th Commandment (theft), and the 9th Commandment (bearing false witness). Hey, obviously people like Caryl Chessman, Willie Sutton, and Joe McCarthy didn’t “interpret those literally.”
So if you refuse to accept the Witnesses’ “interpretation” of Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:10, 11, and the 15th chapter of Acts as “literal” (‘Transfusion is a modern, sophisticated medical procedure and the Bible is the product of ignorance or an undecipherable code’), keep it in mind the next time you decide to “interpret” a statute against reckless driving, tax evasion or forcible rape; I doubt that the judge will listen to your assertion that you didn’t “interpret” the law that way.
Or perhaps you believe that Homo sapiens alone has the ability to communicate in simple, articulate terms and the notion that there is an Almighty God who can do so (better!) is infra dig to you.