Why Antiscience Sucks, Part 2
Posted on March 26th, 2008 by blue collar scientist
An 11-year-old girl died after her parents prayed for healing rather than seek medical help for a treatable form of diabetes, police said Tuesday.
…
[Everest Metro Police Chief Dan] Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.
The parents explained that the reason their child did not get better as a result of prayer is that they did not have sufficient faith.
The mother believes the girl could still be resurrected, the police chief said.
The parents told investigators their daughter last saw a doctor when she was 3 to get some shots, Vergin said. The girl had attended public school during the first semester but didn’t return for the second semester.
If you didn’t catch it up there, the girl was 11 years old when she died. She hasn’t seen a doctor since she was three. She went more than two-thirds of her lifetime without medical care.
The girl has three siblings, ranging in age from 13 to 16, the police chief said.
“They are still in the home,” he said. “There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see.”
Social service agencies and the social work profession will continue to have difficulty establishing credibility amongst common-sense people as long as they continue to consider this sort of thing normal. It should be viewed as a form of neglect that necessitates professional intervention.
Will the parents be charged? I don’t know, but I doubt it. A Wisconsin state law was helpfully posted in the story comments:
State statute 948.03(6): 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.
The comments predictably have a bunch of religious extremists defending the parents’ actions as an efficacious response to sickness, even though every controlled study ever done has shown that prayer is ineffective at curing or even helping someone who is sick. Personally, I think it is fine to pray for your child to be healed, as long as you also get them some competent medical help. A sane, fit parent does anything and everything they can to save the life of their child.
Sometimes the issue when not seeking out health care is lack of insurance or inability to pay for an expensive treatment. The parents operate a small business, operating a coffee shop in a suburb of Wausau, according to the story. Diabetic ketoacidosis is both easily, and fairly inexpensively, treated - at least if you don’t let the condition progress to an acute, dangerous form. People who get it and seek medical attention do not die of it. But it is still possible that the parents didn’t have the money for the treatment, right? It could be they were praying not because they thought that was the best thing to do, but because they had no alternative - right?
Wrong.
Wisconsin has a health insurance program for children called BadgerCare Plus. You can sign up for it here, and it provides comprehensive services to any child under 19, whether they already have insurance or not. Services do require a co-pay. The co-pay ranges from fifty cents to three dollars.
I’m thinking that someone selling lattes for a living can afford a fifty-cent co-pay if it means saving the life of their child.
Several people sent this to me, but I saw it on Pharyngula first.
