Trials for Parents Who Chose Faith Over Medicine - NYTimes.com
Trials for Parents Who Chose Faith Over Medicine - NYTimes.com
Kara Neumann, 11, had grown so weak that she could not walk or speak. Her parents, who believe that God alone has the ability to heal the sick, prayed for her recovery but did not take her to a doctor.
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About 300 children have died in the United States in the last 25 years after medical care was withheld on religious grounds, said Rita Swan, executive director of Children’s Health Care Is a Legal Duty, a group based in Iowa that advocates punishment for parents who do not seek medical help when their children need it. Criminal codes in 30 states, including Wisconsin, provide some form of protection for practitioners of faith healing in cases of child neglect and other matters, protection that Ms. Swan’s group opposes.
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The Neumanns, who had operated a coffee shop, Monkey Mo’s, in this middle-class suburb in the North Woods, are known locally as followers of an online faith outreach group called Unleavened Bread Ministries, run by a preacher, David Eells. The site shares stories of faith healing and talks about the end of the world.
An essay on the site signed Pastor Bob states that the Bible calls for healing by faith alone. “Jesus never sent anyone to a doctor or a hospital,” the essay says. “Jesus offered healing by one means only! Healing was by faith.”
Another example of the tragedy of blind faith. Or how faith overrides common sense. This should be treated as a case of child abuse and gross parental negligence and dealt with accordingly. Freedom of religion is no excuse and no defence against acting like an idiot. If you are an adult and you wish to refuse medical treatment for religious reasons, by all means do so. The world will probably be a better place, but do not foist your ignorance on your children who have no choice on who they are born to. Remember, there is no such thing as a Christian child, a Muslim child or a Hindu child but rather children of Christians, Muslims or Hindu parents. And in a somewhat Kafkaesque turn, there is a website in support of the Neumann’s actions and argue that there should be no liability for their actions. The website actually dares to argue that faith healing is no less effective than medicine. For example it tries to argue that:
“So you see, many hundreds of thousands die in the U.S. every year trusting in drugs and doctors and not even 100 die attempting to trust fully in God.”
I mean seriously. There is a malaise in logic and reasoning here. It is not a case of one or two loonies believing that prayer alone can cure diseases, but a significant number of people who believe in this lunacy. I don’t know which is sadder: the fact that a young life was lost because her parents believe that prayer was all they needed, or the fact that large numbers of people believe in this deluded stuff.
