Hot Button Issue

[drjmaxwell]

I'm looking forward to this woman languishing in prison:

Court orders chemotherapy treatment with 90% success rate (5% chance of survival without it) on 13-year old boy who isn't old enough to give consent and can't read anyway.
AND
Mom takes the kid and runs for California or Mexico for 'alternative medicine'.I suppose it would be cruel and

Comments

[cyperian]

I'm not terribly against people refusing vaccinations especially since there will always be a certain percentage of people who have a lethal reaction to them. It's the life-threatening illnesses that people don't treat their children for on religious grounds that make me uncomfortable. God helps those who help themselves.

There's this old joke about a man at home with floodwaters around him. He sends away a car, a boat, and a helicopter claiming that he trusts God to save him. After drowning, he asks God why He didn't save him. God replies, "I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter!"

I can't help but think of that every time I hear about people refusing treatment on religious grounds.

[drjmaxwell]

That's a good application of that story. I made the comment somewhere above that vaccines were like mass-transit, in that it's always best when everyone else uses it. The problem is that when enough people take that strategy, you get an epidemic.

At least you cited the slim possibility of fatality as a reason not to get vaccinated. The whole autism link just kills me.

[emrlddragon]

Logic and religion don't often make good bedfellows.

[drjmaxwell]

Well, they can be perfectly compatible. I mean, if you could save your life but be damned to hell for eternity, or die and go to paradise, it's a perfectly logical decision to go ahead and die.

If you don't hew to those beliefs, though, then to an outside observer it seems completely insane.

That's why I'd like the government to tie this woman down and give her kid chemo. That way she did everything she could and the kid got chemo'd anyway. She (should be) absolved in the eyes of her religion, and he gets to live. ;)

[rya_kelley]

Look, I have alternate religious views. I don't think the state should step in to interfere with my personal values. . . . unless it could possibly lead to the death of one of my children. I'm all for natural selection, as long as it's the moron and not their offspring that suffers.