Dispassionate analysis :-

According to this article - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/71943/child_endangerment_in_criminal_law.html - whether they can be charged in this case depends on the particular state they are resident in, viz :-

“Another controversial area of child endangerment law concerns the decision of parents who neglect to provide their children with medical treatment for religions reasons. Christian Science parents, for example, believe in the healing power of prayer and do not seek medical attention when their children fall ill or become injured.

In some states, parents cannot be charged with child endangerment because of religious beliefs, but recent statistical analyses might change those laws in the near future. For example, a young boy in Utah died last year because he had juvenile diabetes and his condition was not monitored by a professional. When the medical examiner found that the child was suffering from diabetes, an investigation was launched.”

So there may be at least a case for opening a criminal investigation.

Non-dispassionate analysis :-

Sometimes I just want to hurt people. This is one of those times. These ‘people’ are not even human. They let their own daughter die in agony because of their batshit insane delusions. They shouldn’t even have responsibility for a dog, let alone three other children.

Excuse me while I go puke…

Follow up :-

According to a commenter on the linked news story Wisconsin has an exemption for religious beliefs viz :-

“Unfortunately Wisconsin law won’t hold the parents accountable:

State statute 948.03(6) provides an exemption from the law against failing to act to protect children from bodily harm for what is referred to as ‘Treatment through prayer.’ The statute says: ‘A person is not guilty of an offense under this section solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method of healing ... in lieu of medical or surgical treatment.’”

So they can’t be investigated or prosecuted. This is 2008. Not the dark ages. What kind of insane legislature puts a law like this on the statute books? Wisconsin residents I suggest you find out who proposed this statute and who voted for it and hold them accountable too. If any of them are still in office, recall them and boot them out so fast their feet won’t touch the ground.

I understand that spending time in prison can be very much a faith-enhancing experience.  Perhaps these parents should be given such an opportunity.

And I keep hearing that there is no harm in believing in something that isn’t real.

I haven’t commented in awhile, but I have to on this one. That is absolute bullshit. I just got through haggling with CPS here in Virginia because my wife was diagnosed with post-partum depression. She had completed a psychiatric evaluation which determined that she was not a threat to herself or our childrena and CPS told us that if we did not sign over consent for temporary “respite” care for our children that they would pursue a preliminary removal order. We had to put them in respite care, but as soon as we had a chance to get them back, I put them and my wife on a plane to Arizona....outside of this state’s jurisdiction. It was like something out of “1984”....being punished for thought-crime. These people on the other hand....this is definitely a case of severe neglect.

True Believers™ through and through.

No. Criminally Deluded Dipshit Fuckwad True Believers™

“The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected, the police chief said.” As far as I’m concerned, the mother belongs in a mental ward.

What about the healing tactics of today’s medical profession?  When they fail to diagnose, prescribe drugs unnecessary to the condition but necessary to their economy and ties with Big Pharma, I don’t hear so many complaints.  Because they are qualified to mistreat, misdiagnose, and collect payment when the patient dies.  Their failure musta been God’s will. It’s out of their hands!  Can’t fault them for that, can we?

Apart from that, I think many of America’s children are being brought into an abusive life, where they may have to watch friends and relatives die from a lack of access to necessary and desirable medical care.  Too bad the lack of access isn’t just because America does not provide the funds for every citizen to receive it.  What is particularly disturbing about the fight for the right to necessary care is that necessary, desirable and valuable care is becoming extinct.  The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies need to be put in their place, and doctors ought to be able to actually practice real scientific medicine.  Not marketing science and psychological manipulation that has people begging for “care”.

I have no reason to believe that the girl would have lived had she received medical care.  She might have died sooner from the treatment, died at the same time, or perhaps she would have lived longer.  I don’t know, and neither do any of those who would like to throw stones at the parents.  Would her death have been okay if she had received medical care?

I have no reason to believe that the girl would have lived had she received medical care.  She might have died sooner from the treatment, died at the same time, or perhaps she would have lived longer.  I don’t know, and neither do any of those who would like to throw stones at the parents.

Shit for brains conspiracy theorist.

Diabetes is treatable and while the long-term side effects can be debilitating, nobody should ever die from diabetic ketoacidosis.

Without a doubt the child would have had the chance to live to a ripe old age if her condition had been treated.

I have no reason to believe that the girl would have lived had she received medical care.  She might have died sooner from the treatment, died at the same time, or perhaps she would have lived longer.  I don’t know, and neither do any of those who would like to throw stones at the parents.

I don’t even know where to begin.  Did you actually read what the girl had?  She had Diabetes. Probably Type I from the explanation (the body fails to produce enough insulin in type I and it tends to occur in children).

I hate to break it to you, but Diabetes is 100% treatable through modern medicine only. No herbal remedies that are “suppressed” by the government work. If there are such things, where the heck are they huh? Show me one person that got better or was cured a remedy not produced by your “Big Pharma”?  Or perhaps you think prayer actually is a reasonable alternative to medicine like the parents of this poor child did?  If that’s the case, why did she die?

Diabetes is 100% incurable at the moment, but it’s completely possible to get it under control. I personally am diabetic so I happen to have some experience with it, but I really am interested in knowing what exactly the alternative to the “Big Pharma” treatment for this very well understood disease is if there is one.  I really am getting sick of shelling out $100+ a month to support my Insulin habit.

Also, why do you believe that doctors are unable to practice “scientific medicine”? Do you happen to have any hard evidence to support this claim, or are you just running on conjecture and supposition that has been spewed out by the media (you know, the media who are in the business of scaring people)?

Personally I have a wonderful physician who is extremely knowledgeable, ethical and reasonable.  She has never given me any indication that she is in it to just make money, never tried to push a medicine on me that she did not explain the reasons for and discuss with me ahead of time.  I realize that there are some doctors who are just going through the motions, but I would bet that for every doctor that doesn’t care about their patients there is at least one doctor that does. You’ll find that sort of ratio in any profession out in the real world, be it doctor, programmer, garbage man or whatever.

Bog Brother, you said that diabetes is both 100% treatable through modern medicine only, and also 100% incurable at the moment.  In fact, it is treatable though whatever means a person wishes to use.  I was going to say treatable successfully or unsuccessfully, through whatever means, but since you assert that it is 100% incurable, then successful treatment isn’t possible.  I don’t know much about diabetes.  I believe that both standard medical treatment and alternative methods can succeed or fail at treating illness.  I think licensed, educated doctors engage in guesswork, sometimes to the great benefit of the patient and sometimes not.  At least when they are thinking and guessing, they are doing something, but often I suspect they are not even doing that.

Since you are a diabetic using insulin, you know much more than I how the treatment effects you.  If you are happy with the results of your treatment, I don’t see that you would need to seek an alternative.

Zhyndra, you’re clearly confused:

Bog Brother, you said that diabetes is both 100% treatable through modern medicine only, and also 100% incurable at the moment.  In fact, it is treatable though whatever means a person wishes to use.  I was going to say treatable successfully or unsuccessfully, through whatever means, but since you assert that it is 100% incurable, then successful treatment isn’t possible.

Successful treatment is quite possible, curing it outright is not. There’s a difference between curing a disease and treating a disease. Herpes can’t be cured, but it can be treated. The same is true of diabetes. Properly treated the impact of the disease can be minor for years to come. It will eventually cause more and more problems for the person who has it, but with proper treatment there’s no reason why you can’t live a lifetime and be killed in a car accident long before diabetes takes your life.

I don’t know much about diabetes.

This much is obvious.

I believe that both standard medical treatment and alternative methods can succeed or fail at treating illness.

Sure it’s possible they both can succeed or fail, but that doesn’t mean they have an equal chance of doing so. Of the two I’ll place my bets on standard medical treatments more often than not.

I think licensed, educated doctors engage in guesswork, sometimes to the great benefit of the patient and sometimes not.  At least when they are thinking and guessing, they are doing something, but often I suspect they are not even doing that.

Depending on what’s wrong with you it’s very possible that the Doctor could be reduced to making an educated guess. That’s still better than sitting around praying for God to cure you.

It’s worth pointing out to you again, however, that diabetes is a pretty well known disease among medical professionals making the need for educated guesses non-existent. The treatments for diabetes of all types are well established and proven to extend life in both length and quality substantially.

Since you are a diabetic using insulin, you know much more than I how the treatment effects you.  If you are happy with the results of your treatment, I don’t see that you would need to seek an alternative.

Seeing as you have admitted knowing next to nothing about the disease I fail to see how you’re even remotely qualified to judge whether or not anyone else should consider alternative treatments.

I think licensed, educated doctors engage in guesswork, sometimes to the great benefit of the patient and sometimes not.

Have you heard of the Scientific Process before? I’m pretty sure I learned of it in the 4th grade.

Regardless, Type 1 or Type 2 is treatable and certainly doesn’t need to be a cause of death. So whatever your beliefs on medical staff are, they are irrelevant to this case.

Seeing as you have admitted knowing next to nothing about the disease I fail to see how you’re even remotely qualified to judge whether or not anyone else should consider alternative treatments.

I didn’t know I needed to be qualified to express an opinion.  If I were pleased with the results of a given treatment, I wouldn’t seek another means of treatment.

You’re right. You don’t need any qualifications to express a stupid opinion. My mistake. Please accept my sincerest apology.

I have a feeling that Zhyndra may have a problem with living, not with sickness. See, if we are cured or successfully treated for a disease we may have a much longer existence in this life, thus putting off our “return to God,” which everyone knows is MUCH more important than living, no? 

leguru, I can clear that up.  I am very interested in the longest life possible in this life.  I am far more concerned with this life than any other.

Zhyndra -

Les answered most of your responses to my satisfaction, but on the issue of doctors guessing, I have a related tale to tell:

My brother, who works a physically demanding job, recently suffered a bit of severe muscle strain in his abdominal muscles.  He visited his doctor only because the pain was intolerable.  It wasn’t constant though, so his girlfriend, who is a chiropractic student and apparent believer in alternative medicine, as well as a borderline conspiracy nut in the vein of “Doctors and pharma companies just want your money so they force unnecessary medications on patients”.

Anyway, my brother finally went to the doctor. The doctor poked and prodded his stomach after hearing how he got the injury. He told her that the pain was not constant, but it did return.  He did not relate any pain at the time of the visit. The doctor prescribed a strong muscle relaxant to my brother, then told him to take it if the pain returned.

My brother, half convinced of his girlfriend’s ideas told me that this was why he hated doctors.  I’m not entirely sure what he expected the doctor to do (maybe cut him open and see the strained muscle tissues?), but in that case, I’m pretty sure the doctor was in the right. There was no need for expensive tests in this case (it was a pretty straightforward case of pulled muscles), maybe she should have checked him for hernia, but I think he over-reacted in this case.

The doctor, who has years of experience in diagnosing patients could be wrong, that’s human nature and the nature of science. Science cannot possibly cover all the variables, if done right, an experiment will cover as many seemingly relevant variables as possible, but it would be impossible to cover everything. What doctors do is the same thing. Would you like to have to undergo a full body scan in a CT imaging chamber every time you go see your physician? Even then there is no guarantee.

But I’ve seen how alternative medicine practitioners diagnose diseases. They tend to look at you, hear the symptoms then make a snap decision and give you some herbal remedy.  Odd how each one I’ve encountered always has a pet rememdy. Black Coohash will fix that, and that, AND that too! Take colloidal silver, it solves every problem! Sure, if there was a cure-all like that, or even a suite of cure-alls like that, no amount of corporate control would be able to stop people from getting it. And besides, wouldn’t it be widespread common knowledge from before there were pharmaceutical companies? You know, like the widespread, common knowledge about the seasons, and eating when you are hungry?

I’m pretty sure alternative medicine is just a know-nothing junk science that is propagated by those who are looking to get rich quick off credulous people who are ill informed about modern medicine and who believe the hype that the peddlers of the stuff are screaming. Add to that the hysterical reporting by the media and you’ve got a truly scary combination. Then media always report things worse than they usually are, after all, they stand to gain by making their audience scared. When you are afraid, you don’t think critically, and you tend to listen to those who gave you the news about the subject of fear. On one hand the news media, the other hand, alternative medicine peddlers.

One last thing on alternative medicine though.  I have absolutely no medical training beyond basic CPR and First Aid.  I have taken numerous science classes in school, including college level biology in high school, but I am not a trained medical professional. Taking that into consideration, I could today, start selling any number of herbal remedies, make outlandish claims as to their effectiveness in curing a whole host of diseases by creative labeling techniques (may help prevent cancer of the toe), and make a killing off the credulous populous in short order. I need no background in the diseases that I will claim to be able to cure, no any background in herpetology, pharmacology or any other science that would be relevant to the study of plants or their uses. Hell, as long as I maintain the product as a food supplement, I need not undergo anything more than the basic food safety testing required by the FDA and health departments of various state governments, don’t even need to prove what I claim, just so long as I don’t actually make an overt claim on the product or in my literature concerning the product.  I can cook up a whole slew of testimonials that claim to have been cured by my product and include them in my literature though.

I’m not saying that you would take my cancer curing miracle food instead of going to your doctor, but I’d bet money that I could get many, many people to do just that.  They’d be much more likely to die, and much quicker since my treatment is no such thing than if they had gone to their doctor and underwent common cancer treatments. Sure modern medicine doesn’t get it right all the time, but that’s a whole hell of a lot better than alternative medicine (which is basically what we had been saddled with for most of human history) which pretty much doesn’t get it right ever. Ponder this, before the late 1600’s when the scientific method was solidified, medicine was pretty the same as alternative medicine today. If alternative medicine actually worked, wouldn’t people in the past have been healthier than they are today? Wouldn’t they have lived longer lives? What’s that you say? They only lived into their 30’s? We in the western world live on average to around 80? I’m not sure I believe the alternative medicine peddlers in that case.  According to many of them, the way things used to be was far better than the way things are today, however history tends to disagree with them dramatically.

This story is so stupid and heartbreaking on so many levels. Type I diabetes may be genetic, which means one or more of the girl’s siblings may be in for the same thing. It also means that there are probably other type I diabetics in their family. The news article said that one of the girl’s relatives asked the police to check on her. Perhaps they heard about her illness and recognized the symptoms? Unfortunately for everyone, they were a little too late.

But I’ve seen how alternative medicine practitioners diagnose diseases. They tend to look at you, hear the symptoms then make a snap decision and give you some herbal remedy.  Odd how each one I’ve encountered always has a pet rememdy. Black Coohash will fix that, and that, AND that too! Take colloidal silver, it solves every problem!

Yup, they pray on this idea humans have about there being a magical pill that solves the problem. Just take this and no more worries! Also why we have all the diet crap out there. No one wants to hear, “Eat less food, exercise more!” Nope they want that magic pill.

Is that magic pill anything like the smart pills my brother once sold me? 

Is that magic pill anything like the smart pills my brother once sold me?

Damn is that all it takes? Hook a brotha up!

Vaugely related

21 Die in Indonesia After Drinking ‘Herbal Remedy’ Concoction

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,342588,00.html

Is that magic pill anything like the smart pills my brother once sold me?

Oh yeah, it’s 100% Homeopathic! It’s so good because we use a 3,000,000C dilution for this shit, so it’s super potent!

For anyone who doesn’t know what the fuck a 3 million C dilution is, I present to you...a Wikipedia explanation of Homeopathic dilution!:

Three potency scales are in regular use in homeopathy. Hahnemann created the centesimal or “C scale”, diluting a substance by a factor of 100 at each stage. The centesimal scale was favored by Hahnemann for most of his life. A 2C dilution requires a substance to be diluted to one part in one hundred, and then some of that diluted solution is diluted by a further factor of one hundred. This works out to one part of the original solution mixed into 9,999 parts (100 x 100 -1 ) of the diluent.[65] A 6C dilution repeats this process six times, ending up with the original material diluted by a factor of 1,000,000,000,000. (100 × 100 × 100 × 100 × 100 × 100, or 100^6). Higher dilutions follow the same pattern. In homeopathy, a solution that is more dilute is described as having a higher potency. Higher potencies (that is, more dilute substances) are considered by homeopaths to be stronger and deeper-acting remedies.

So, since higher dilutions are more potent, I figured a 3millionC dilution would be so good it would solve pretty much any problem...except stupid.  Fuck! I can’t fix that one.  Sorry I was a bit wrong, it will fix anything but stupid (good thing to, I’m gonna make a mint off this stuff). So I guess the answer is no, it’s not like smart pills.  It will solve all your other problems though.

So to sum up, I’m gonna give you a pill that contains 1 part active ingredient per 100^3,000,000 parts water.  Sounds pretty good huh? (Are there even that many molecules of water on earth? Hell, even that many molecules of any sort on earth? Anybody? My calculator broke trying to render the figure in non scientific notation.)

A homeopathic cure for stupid should be trivial. Find something that causes stupid, then dilute it a gazillion times and there you have it.

So to sum up, I’m gonna give you a pill that contains 1 part active ingredient per 100^3,000,000 parts water.  Sounds pretty good huh? (Are there even that many molecules of water on earth? Hell, even that many molecules of any sort on earth? Anybody?

It has been estimated that there are approximately 10^79 atoms in the Universe, so your Homeopathic remedy would require many, many more Universes for it to work.