Parents pick prayer over docs; girl dies

Weird and sad.

(in advance - sorry for going off on one a little) but this is another reason why America scares me. The religious fanaticism all over America (including your president) is comparable to other countries that are on its "axis of evil", only the countries on "the axis of evil" are struggling for power, while the other (America) already has it!

I think it's not all that scary. The parents stick with their decision to not have called the doctor. They fully believe that their daughter is in a better place, and that it was "her time" to go.

However, if those feelings change, that shows remorse, to me. Its at that point when charges should be filed.

I should add that I live in Wisconsin...but on the opposite side of the state.

Well I guess they know for sure now that god doesn't exist or if "it" does it doesn't care enough to heal the sick, much like a human doesn't worry about stepping on an ant.

Religion is so cool! Where can I sign up? *snark*

It's so sad that poor little girl had to pay for her parents' dim-witted superstitious thinking -- with her life! If the girl had survived, her parents should be thrown in jail for child abuse.

I'd like to offer a defense for the parents. Doctors are sometimes disappointingly clueless. yes, her diabetes probably would have been easily recognized, diagnosed, and treated. But there are other conditions under which one goes to a doctor, who in the end says "hmmm, curious, we dont know what it is." And then they throw drugs at you. All the latest trendy drugs that you see on TV... nasonex, mucinex, singulair, advium, etc.... whose effects are minimal and whose side effects are all sorts of weird shit like suicidal tendencies. I have lost a lot of faith in doctors, it seems like you have to be on your death bed before they will take a good look at you. and in the meantime you're expected to spend your money on cheap-ass ineffective commercial medicine.

so my point is, i can understand a loss of faith in doctors and western medicine.

that's pure superstition

the quotes from the family sound like a cop out, how do we not get in trouble for this??? blame god....(still incredibly sad and disturbing)

absolutely disgusting . sadly , this is not uncommon - there have been a few cases like this in the last few years , including one where pictures of a girl who'd been dead for 2 days and then taken to a hospital were posted on "rotten.com" - the complete sickness of this kind of thing doesn't really sink in until you actually see pictures of the preventable corpses it produces .

I don't know if throwing your hands up in the air and and giving up (or not taking rsonable actions like consulting a doctor) is the same thing as religious faith.

How far do you really take thinking like that?

"Let's not give her water to drink. If God wants her to live, then water shouldn't be necessary."

Or

"Yes her bedroom is on fire, but it would show a lack of faith if we busted down her door and physically moved her to a safer location. If God wants her to live then...."

Or what if her illness/injury HAD been more cut and dry? When if she got hit by a car and was bleeding to death in the street? Would the parents physically fight off the EMT's insisting that, "If God wants her to live...."

I have no problem with prayer so long as it's coupled with due diligence. Prayer or faith without due diligence wanders into the territory of (I hate to say it) mental illness or just ordinary criminal negligence. Especially where children are concerned. If an adult wants to renounce all their worldy goods and stop eating to the point of death out of religious zeal -- that is their decision. But children can't make those kinds of decisions and are at the mercy of their parents.

Well said, crob. Faith without works is useless. Or in this case, criminally negligent (and cruel).

Or better yet, cut out the superstition that they call "faith" and just see the situation for what it was - that little girl needed a doctor's help.

I had the pleasure of living with a few families growing up, and lucky me ... one of them was a christian fundamentalist one (yep .. the no doc kind).

To make a long story short, when I was 7, i had a joyous 2 weeks of listening to bible stories (and no kidding ... still being dragged to church) while suffering from pneumonia.

I lived through ... which was cool ... but later in life when getting a CAT scan for some other mishap, the docs found a crystalized chunk in one of my lungs ... which .. upon asking questions ... they were pretty sure god did not help in avoiding :)

so ... yeah ... doctors ... pawns of the pharm and insurance companies not withstanding .. are still a good idea.

Rest in peace Madeline. They know not what they do.

Religion can be such a grey area at times -- because it's right on the edge between respectable philosophy and supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

For example: would any of us view this case differently if the parents thought it was aliens from the Andromeda galaxy that had ordered them to refuse medical help? What if they had said, "We believe there is a spaceship hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet and if our daughter is seen by a doctor her soul won't ascend into that spaceship and taken to the Paradise World located many light years from here." -- would we view them much, much more critically than we are now?

Religion just walks that fine line.

Some people will hear this story and say, "Their faith is commendable! They must truly love God!"

But it's just interesting to me how subjective the whole thing is because I'm sure -- positive! -- that if their rationale for denying (or delaying) medical help had been anything other than the typical/generic "God" of Western christianity their would not be anyone who would be defending them.

Again, what if they really and truly believed it was the "will" of the aliens from Andromeda?

What if they claimed that they wanted to call a doctor -- but their bodies were possessed by demons or wood nymphs and those invisible creatures prevented them for doing so until it was too late?

And if we would be less (much less) tolerant of these parents (ar at least much more suspicious of their mental health) had they professed a belief in aliens or magical gnomes -- why is that?

Why would believing in aliens be any less outrageous than beliving in angels or be a cause for more concern?

Praise the Lord!

CHRIST! What a bunch of LOONIES!!!!

I hope they both get life in prison!
Throw away the key judge!!!

Good point LAHolly -- although if we were to go back even further in time we could ask, "Is this the best idea God could come up with to redeem humanity? Seems like He could have come up with a less violent solution to the rather vaguely defined problem of original sin"

Or we could go back even further and ask, "Exactly how did God let things get so far out of control with humanity in the first place that He had to resort to a) creating Jesus b) just to horribly execute him so that c) all the spiritual debt we, as humanity, had apparently accumulated could be erased in some sort of weirdly complex sinner-bankruptcy procedure?"

It all seems a little overly complex and convoluted (to my way of thinking at least)

Almost makes Scientology seem resonable by comparison.

C'est la vie. If through negligence or any other reason, this is still <<only>> one more death of a child after trillions that have gone before it. Children die all the time and as harsh as it may seem, this is a sad fact of life.

Yes, the parents could have saved her but they didn't, this is another sad fact of life and a common occurrence. Religion is based on not thinking things through rationally, by living by ones heart and their faith in a higher purpose.

It's not really anyone else's business to get involved with this. If it means one member of a religious family gets to go to heaven early then that's surely a blessing for everyone.

Peace Be With Her (I'm An Atheist)

The father is an ex cop and still doesnt take her to a doc.??? dont you have to go to get a check up to go to school? seriously middle america needs to get on the train.

"Anyone who claims their christianity gives them the right to claim goodness and kindness, needs to remember it was christians who demanded that Jesus be hung upon a cross."

LOL!

***

ok, if they took her to a doctor and she still died, do we condemn science? or, the doctor for that matter? as a parent (and athiest), i would do my darnest to save my own child, but i would never secure a life of pain for him/her. death is natural.

***

"The girl's mother, Leilani Neumann, said the family believes in the Bible and that healing comes from God, but she said they do not belong to an organized religion or faith, are not fanatics and have nothing against doctors.

She insisted her youngest child, a wiry girl known to wear her straight brown hair in a ponytail, was in good health until recently.

'We just noticed a tiredness within the past two weeks," she said Wednesday. "And then just the day before and that day (she died), it suddenly just went to a more serious situation. We stayed fast in prayer then. We believed that she would recover. We saw signs that to us, it looked like she was recovering.'" (cited from article)

The parents weren't complete fanatics! They simply didn't go to the doctors on time! More likely, because they had no insurance or money and were ill informed about their daughter's condition! This is a political issue, not a religious one!

I anticipated reading abortion advocates celebrating the parents' decision as their right to determine which members of their family deserve to live or die.

So much for consistency.

pressrecord - The point isn't whether they were fanatical or not; they opped out of proven drug therapy for... supersticious blather. True, they weren't as histerical as some posts here may imply, but they are very ignorant, and caused their daughter's death directly. You say that death is natural, but what would you do? You implied that the only other option would be a miserable life of organ transplants, moving from hospital to hospital, but the many people I know with diabetes are pretty normal. I mean, she'd probably have to carry an insulin kit, but no biggy. The parents have committed a grave attrocity, but their grief and doubt should be punishment enough. The crime was not intentional, and thus, does not deserve punishment. It is neither political, nor religious, but moral. Can we punish these parents for wanting the best for their daughter, but being incredibly deluded?

dco, that was thoughtful and i see your point. i'm sure that moment when they could've called the doctor, but didn't, would haunt them all their lives. imagine losing your daughter all of a sudden, as if it was a work of God, a cruel lesson...my heart still goes out to them. a cruel lesson indeed.

Here is my commentary I posted at LateForLife.com.


A young girl recently died from complications with diabetes in Wisconsin. Her parent’s had prayed for her recovery, but she did not recover. The AP ran a story yesterday, Parents Pick Prayer over Docs; Girl Dies. I found the article being discussed on a blog. There were about a dozen comments that reflected shock and horror at the supposed negligence of the girl’s parents. Some expressed contempt for organized religion.

My intention will be to use this story to demonstrate the dangers of cultural bias in the media and our lives.

I read a similar story that took place in the 1980s during an anthropology course. The story, which you can learn more about here, was about a Hmong girl living in the United States as a refugee. She suffered from seizures that her parents explained as, “the spirit catches you and you fall down”. Her parents explained this to US doctors who did not believe them. Because the girl was living in the United States, many people tried to intervene with the traditional Hmong healing methods the girl’s parents employed. The parents feared Western medicine and refused to administer medicines prescribed by US doctors. The seizures continued, custody battles ensued, and eventually the girl became brain-dead. Here we see another argument for parental negligence.

These examples both contain ethnocentric or cultural bias. Ethnocentrism is a word used to describe how people view their own culture as superior to other cultures. When studying culture, it is important to be objective and not compare cultures in terms of better or worse. Using the Hmong example, there is no true comparison between Western and Hmong healing practices. It might be my belief that Western medicine is more effective, but a belief is not a truth. The term “effective” is also culturally subjective.

Both these examples imply that there was a simple choice the parents could have made to save their children. (Note: this choice is not implied by the author, but by the author’s research in the case of the Hmong girl) These choices are also founded in ethnocentric thinking. If you consider the perspective of the parents involved, they acted sincerely and compassionately. Each was guided by their own beliefs, which by definition can not be right or wrong; or better or worse than our judgments of them. This is what the American mother of the deceased child said in regards to pending legal actions against her.

"our lives are in God's hands. We know we did not do anything criminal. We know we did the best for our daughter we knew how to do."(AP- 3/27)

This is a near impossible argument to make if you can not think in terms of cultural relativism or neutrality. (Which is difficult if you don’t have a fetish for anthropology!) It’s understandable to think that our medical treatments would prove more effective than sacrificing animals and prayer, but perhaps not. These stories are sad, but they are not pitiful or contemptuous. In general, parents hate to be told how to raise their children from critics. Can you imagine someone trying to separate you from your culture and from saving your child’s life?

Nice to see the passionate bleeding hearts here gathered together to honor the little girl. My bad, what I meant to say is that you people need to lay off bashing religion, the vast majority of Christians wouldn't do this, the parents of this girl should be prosecuted. Their obviously screwed up mental state isn't the fault of their religion. IDIOCY/ MORONISM is blind, it could care less what race, creed, color, religion, or political affiliation you are. Natural selection needs to remove morons like that from the gene pool.

Of course, you are completely exempt from the dogma of "moronism." I figure "bigotism," or "ignorance" would fit better. Or are you a member of the Christian faith? If so, you should hardly insult these parents for their faith. In fact, I believe, traditionally, a Christian would consider these parents quite virtuous. Your last comment, however, implies that anyone with this degree of faith does not desrve to live, that they should have been naturally irradicated. Your screen name also implies that the same fate should befall any "liberal" individual. Though I am appauled by this, I shall ignore it. I would, however, elaborate on the matter of these parents idiocy, as I'm sure you rival it.

LateforLife, thank you so much for not posting the typical one sided views that i see so much in these arguments!

Well, hold on. I can justify this from the parent's perspective, but it is no less ludicrous from my own. I do acknowledge the severe implicaions made by the word perspective, and that by my own, I am citing the vast number of experiences and events which have shaped my outlook. Existentiall speaking, their reality may very well be different than mine. I cannot assume that simply because we disagree, I am right, and they have not thought, whatsoever. Regardless, my perspective is the most objective standard I can offer. From my, seemingly rationalist approach, the parents were extemely irresponsible and calous to disregard proven medical practice in favor of (blind) faith. Medicine may be perfect, but in most cases, this is because WE are not perfect. Humans don't always function the same, and docters cannot always manage all the variables. Nonetheless, treatment is almost ALWAYS better than negligence. No one should ever sue a docter for malpractice. Mistakes are mad, and you can't expect perfection, even in someone who is to keep your health and safety. I have friends who reject western medicine, but if any of them had a heart attack, I'm willing to bet they'd rather bayer than prayer. The thing is, "western," in this case, simply means empirical. Everything else, as bigoted as it sounds, is just a guess, or plain supersticion.