Mods feel free to move this if the discussion gets too political.

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I'm all for freedom of religion, and teaching your kids whatever you want.

BUT, when you end up killing your 11yo child because instead of getting medical care for an entirely treatable illness, you were too busy talking to your imaginary friend who lives in the sky, that's just all kinds of f*cked up there. This is child abuse at best, although I'm leaning towards negligent homicide myself. The girl was 11! She relied on her parents judgement ot protect her and instead they just watched her die.

And people wonder why I have depression.......

Hey poor! You don't have to be poor anymore! Jesus is here!

Yeah, was hearing doctor groan while reading this story over the radio other day. Our mandatory educational system's obviously workin'. But hey! We should put the BIBLE into public schools. Thas all the education kids really need.

this news made me sick yesterday.

But, surely God gave us medicine to cure diseases?
Reminds me of the old fable of the man on his roof during a flood who refused to let people rescue him. When he eventually drowned he asked God "Why didn't you save me?" God said, "What the heck to you think those rescue workers were for!?!?!"

Im not religious by any means, just trying to make sense of it all.

Reminds me of that Scrubs episode
Jehovah's Witness refuses to have transplant because they believe that transferring blood ain't right...
Er, yeah, I might think that's disgusting, but's that because it involves needles and surgery (which I hate ), but hello? I understand the fact you want to pray, but when I got Appendicitis, my parents took me to a hospital (it was a Sunday morning as well...), the Doctors treated me while my parent prayed.
Duh...
Got to go home after two days - three weeks holiday afterwards

Appendicitis rules, two weeks off school!
Oh, and nearly died and stuff... totally worth it!

Yeah, it is a great thing really...

Ditto. I thought I had already seen the lowest level of stupid. Damm toppers

I proclaim this child a saint. Not because she died while her parents kept praying, but for doing all of us the favor of taking away the genetic result of such a brainless union.

How many times do stories like this need to be printed before people realize God doesn't do miraculous healings anymore?

Pray for courage, inspiration, hope...those are all good.

Praying for divine physical intervention is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Well, miracles do happen. Only thing is, they happen when you don't count on them.

I'll believe God miracle cures people when I see an amputee's leg grow back.

*prays for God to move this thread*

and overly devoute christians don't know why people have a problem with them.

Fanatics of any faith =

Praying for anything that you can do yourself =

Hey, me too!

We should consider the ramifications here and ask at what point do we want government telling parents when they should have their children medically treated. Is it for life threatening illnesses? Afflictions which may cause the child pain? How about diseases that are merely annoyances? After all, a child with severe acne may be ridiculed at school, which could cause him or her to develop into a sociapathic homicidal mainiac.

What if a child suffers from a disease that isn't sudden, but kills slowly over a period of months or even years? You're wanting to hold the parents accountable for this child's death...if a child dies from leukemia, would they need to have followed a government approved treatment schedule in order to be exempt from prosecution?

The flip side of that is, say the government tells you "you must get your child treated for X illness," and you do so, but your child suffers medical complications from the treatment and dies, not as a result from the illness, but because of the treatment...can parents then hold the government accountable for the child's death? After all, the child might not have died if the parents weren't forced to have their child treated.

You're saying the parents killed this child and that isn't true. Diabetes killed this child and the parents allowed it to happened. That's horrific, but it isn't the same thing.

It's called negligent homicide.

Seriously. They totally killed her.

I'm not arguing what it's called, Pete. I'm saying allowing someone to die isn't the same thing as putting a gun to someone's head and pulling the trigger. A lot of times the definition for "negligent homicide" is ambiguous at best. Ambiguous laws give the controlling authority a wide range of latitiude, which creates an unrestrained 800lb. gorrila.

Who's to say at what point negligence ends? What if my son starts coughing tonight and has a cough for a few days, drops dead 4 days from now and an autopsy reveals he had pneumonia*. Should I be held liable for his death? If so, does that mean that parents need to start taking their child to the doctor every time he or she starts coughing?

I reiterate, I hate that this child died. But the few children who die every year under similar circumstances is a far smaller danger to society than government getting involved in a family's medical treatment choices (or more involved in ANY of our everyday choices), which is what I was trying to say.

*I use this example because I know of someone who did that very thing. They started coughing and a few days later died. It was diagnosed as pneumonia even though they never exhibited any other symptoms except a severe cough.

It's not first degree murder, sure. But you still go to jail for it.

In the United States they put you in jail for a lot of things that maybe they shouldn't put you in jail for.

I guess that's the libertarian in me.

The whole point of leaving people alone (i.e. libertarianism in a simplistic nutshell) is to preserve people's rights, you know, life, liberty, etc. If "leaving people alone" results in the loss of someone's life or liberty, then we have a problem. JMO

Simplistic, indeed, because Libertarian philosophy is, first and foremost, the GOVERNMENT leaving people alone.

So, you, Lord Madhammer, have just been appointed benevolent dictator of our country, heretofore referred to as the good ol' US of BD (United States of Big Daddy.) You want to ensure that this does not happen again and if it does, the parents are held accountable. What law would you pass?

(Okay, so this wouldn't work because you'd need about 535 more elected nannies to take care of us all.)

I saw this a week ago, and Glenn Beck of all people made a good point(NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS FROM A CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW. IF THIS OFFENDS YOU, YOU'RE AN ASSMUNCH): God put doctors on the world for a reason. Praying when there is a perfectly viable alternative that does not involve major sin=incredible stupidity.

Letting a little girl die isn't one of them - and I say this as someone accused of being a Libertarian all the time. She was 11 for Christ's sake. She's not old enough to care about political agendas, she just wants to run and play.

The government shouldn't force adult diabetics to take any medicine they don't want to take, but we should damn sure expect a parent to provide the proper care to get their kid to 18 so that they can make that call about how they want to live their life.




Edited to fix all the typos Lord Madhammer immortalized with his quote.

Seriously. Hello, she was a minor, not legally able to make her own decisions, in the care of parental adult-type figures whose responsibility it was to take care of stuff like that.

P.S. if Glenn Beck is a Christian, then I'm converting to Scientology.

P.P.S. if this were the United States of Big Daddy, I'd leave the law as it is -- criminal penalties should apply for negligent homicide IMO. If somebody dies in your care, as a direct result of your own negligence, then you should be held responsible, period.

There's an old joke/parable that goes:

A man's town begins to flood. As the waters rise a truck passes by his home and asks if he needs help. "No," he replies, "the Lord will help me." The waters continue to rise and he moves the the second story of his home. A boat passes by and asks if he needs help. "No," he replies, "the Lord will help me." The waters continue to rise and he climbs to his roof. A helicopter passes by and asks if he needs help. "No," he replies, "the Lord will help me." The waters continue to rise and the man begins to drown. "LORD!" the man cries, "WHY DIDN'T YOU HELP ME??" The Lord peers down through the rain clouds and says "I sent you a truck, a boat and a helicopter, what else did you want me to do, part the flood waters again?"

That's not the way it works and you know it. You must define "in your care," you must specify who is legally obligated for care (for instance, if the parents are divorced and they live with only one parent, will both parents be liable?), you will have to specify what diseases must be treated.

Hobbes-timus: define "proper care." Will there be a government-approved care schedule? Does the government need to go so far as to list all specific diseases which might be fatal to children and the "proper care" parents must follow in order to be held liable? What if the disease is rare or exhibits ambiguous symptoms or is even asymptomatic?

That may all seem silly, but if an authority is going to hold people accountable for not "providing the proper care," that authority will also have to define what proper care is. If there is no definition, then you're giving that authority more leeway than I'm comfortable with.

This is a huge gray area and I'll admit I'm not 100% convinced that the parents should be cleared of any wrongdoing. After all, if they had, say, not FED the child because of their religious convictions and the child starved to death, I'd probably be screaming for their heads. However,
1) Whenever something like this comes up and people start screaming "There oughtta be a law!" or "The government needs to step in and do something!" my gut reaction is always "Is this business really where we want the government to stick its big fat nose in, and, if so, what would be the ramifications?"
2)I like to play Devil's Advocate.

I'm a Jew, and this makes a lot of sense. Beck may be off the mark a lot of times (IMO), but in this case, from a religious PoV anyway, he's right on the money.

As for these parents who let their child die, I would like to see the part of the Bible where Jesus says "no doctors or medicine."


Well he's a Mormon.

Look, don't overthink this. The girl had a medical condition that resulted in her death because her parents chose not to treat her for it. They're her legal guardians. They're responsible.

Don't overthink it? Dude, I don't want to give the government the authority to say "Your child died, you didn't take him to the doctor, you go to jail" whenever the hell it suits them.

If it were a true statement, I wouldn't mind giving them that athourity at all.

*circular argument*

But that's the problem I have. What makes it a TRUE statement? Does not taking my son to the doctor for a cough make me liable if he dies? Does not having him treated for a nose bleed that later turns out to be a brain hemorrhage make me liable?

My fear is that this "authority" would be used to prosecute parents who did all they knew to do, yet their child still died. I sure as hell don't want to leave it up to some federal judge to determine what "proper care" is before sending someone to jail.

the way to look sat is like this:

the kid gets sick and gets progressively worse. Any responsible partent should take said child to hospital or at least a doctor to try and find out what is wrong.

Doing nothing in the physical real world to help the girl and just praying for her health does not constitute good parenting.

Um, the fact that if you have diabetes & you don't treat it = you die.

how is it circular? If it's true that the kid was obviously sick (this girl had been for a month), and the parents *chose* not to take her to the hospital, and the kid died when she could have been treated easily, then I think the govt should haul them off. If your kid has a nosebleed for 10 minutes before keeling over, you couldn't have gotten him to the doctor. But haveing a nosebleed for 4 days, or numerous ones, yeah, you should know enough to get him checked out.



I think you're being HELLA paronoid. HELLA. If you're worried about getting taken away, I'm sure there are about 200 other laws that would be much more relavant. Like all the ones that don't involve your child dieing of neglect. If the cops were waiting in the wings to take you away for that...they're just as dumb as this girl's parents.

What if a child starts coughing, three days later starts running fever, and the next day later drops dead? The parents, who both just suffered light bouts of some sort of viral infection, but nothing serious enough for them to seek medical care, decide to forgo medical care in their child's case. I'm worried that some legal authority would come forward and say "It was obvious from the symptoms the child was exhibiting (coughing, fever) that he was suffering from Lower Namibian Scarlet Whooping fever, and YET THE PARENTS DID NOTHING!"

And I still don't know how I feel about forcing people to submit to medical care if it goes against their religious beliefs, regardless of how retarded it might seem to the rest of us.

YA RLY




It's not the same Powerglideing thing! Diabetes is a well known disease that many people in the US suffer from. The things it can do to you are well known. They knew what was happening to their child.

Lower Namibian Scarlet Whooping fever isn't anywhere near as common as Diabetes, and a day later isn't comparable to a month.

We're talking about a minor who was legally unable to make her own medical decisions. If an adult decides to forego medical treatment in favor of prayer, then good for them. But when you're making that decision for someone else, it's a different matter.

That was directed at this whole argument, not directly at you, sorry.

I am very paranoid when it comes to any person or entity that has authority over me. Which is why if one individual is going to tell another individual "This is going to be your responsibility OR ELSE!" they better damn sure have a clear definition of said responsibility.

*Bangs head against wall*

Not all authority is bad, you nitwit. There are reasons why the negligent homicide/neglect laws exist: to protect against this kind of tragedy. To prevent people from leaving their kids in their own filth until they die of exposure and whatnot.

OMFG take ownership for your life sometime

Agreed, but...

...who determines how rare the disease must be before the parents are cleared of responsibility?

I think you should be put in jail if someone has to tell you that your child is your responsibility.

JMO.

HEY no name-calling, okay

Name calling = FAIL.

...except in INH.