Faith healing causing high infant mortality rate

[unsafetydancer]

Article from the Guardian newspaper today. This is all kinds of fucked up, one guy was treated for a broken ankle as a child with out of date olive oil and wine. When he kept passing out because of the pain his family beat him because he was apparently not letting god heal him. A baby died in his arms when he was 5 and he was told it was because he didn't have enough faith in god!

How do they get away with this? Apparently a child witnessing an even younger child die a preventable death is "god's will", not a result of some batshit fundamentalism that denies their own kids access to very basic medical treatment. Apparently the child mortality rate in the area mentioned is 10 times higher than that of the rest of Idaho. Surely at some point at least one person would decide they would much rather their child got to live. I really don't understand this. How can anyone let a child suffer like that?

 

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/13/followers-of-christ-idaho-religious-sect-child-mortality-refusing-medical-help?CMP=fb_gu

[JillyO]

It's incredible to me how ass-backwards this country is in some regards. It's bad enough that there are so many whackos who neglect their children like that. But the fact that their insanity is protected by law? Unbe-fucking-lievable. Makes me so mad!!

[violynn]

41 minutes ago, JillyO said:

It's incredible to me how ass-backwards this country is in some regards. It's bad enough that there are so many whackos who neglect their children like that. But the fact that their insanity is protected by law? Unbe-fucking-lievable. Makes me so mad!!

 

41 minutes ago, JillyO said:

It's incredible to me how ass-backwards this country is in some regards. It's bad enough that there are so many whackos who neglect their children like that. But the fact that their insanity is protected by law? Unbe-fucking-lievable. Makes me so mad!!

QFT!  I wish I could 'like' this a million more times.

[bashfulpixie]

I'm all for religious freedom.  But when that freedom puts the life of someone who is unable to fend for themselves at risk, there needs to be a line drawn.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

This year (and at least one other year) an Idaho legislator did try to change the laws that protect parents who only allow faith healing for their children. 

http://www.ktvb.com/mb/news/local/capitol-watch/faith-healing-bill-on-the-table/43494271

(Idaho representative John Gannon has tried to pass a bill about this issue for at least 2 years now.)

" 'It's pretty simple really,' said Rep. John Gannon, who is co-sponsoring the bill. 'It's designed to require treatment for a child if a child is in imminent danger of dying.' "

" 'The exemption is still there for religious belief,' explained Gannon. 'You don't have to vaccinate or give aspirin. It's really if there's something extraordinarily serious going on.' "

Unfortunately, the bill died in committee. The same news source has a longer explanation here.

ETA-- @unsafetydancer, I finally got a chance to read the whole article from The Guardian. My links aren't nearly as comprehensive. Guess I should read first, then post. That's a really good article. 

[violynn]

Who the heck decides changing a law protecting children form preventable death isn't a great idea?  In @WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?'s link above, the Chairman of the Idaho Health and Safety committee said he just didn't feel 'this' was an issue that needed addressing right now.  What!?!?

[doggie]

sure glad Oregon did it one church caused the law to happen how sad is that?

[unsafetydancer]

All those graves and none of them had to die

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

Does anyone here know much about the Followers of Christ? (I know the problem is the exemption in the law and that children in other fundamentalist cults are at risk, too.) I've learned a bit about fundamentalist Mormons (like the young woman, Mariah, in the article grew up in), but when I tried searching for info on Followers of Christ, almost everything I found focused (understandably) on their complete ban on medical care.

Wikipedia briefly covers their origins and calls them fundamentalist Pentecostals. But does anyone know more about their specific beliefs? I know a little bit from a friend, but only a tiny bit.

[violynn]

I could've sworn I read on one of these links that the Followers were secretive, even more so than other factions of Pentecosts, but I can't find it now.

[RosyDaisy]

The fundamentialist Pentecostals I know aren't anti-medicine or anti-vax.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

What I know is from 30 years or so ago. The girls I knew attended public school. The women and girls weren't allowed to cut their hair (not even a trim), but they didn't cover their hair (at school) or wear only dresses. No medical care ever for anything. (So only homebirths, of course.) KJV only. Women were expected to stay home with the kids, but I don't know how strictly that was mandated. Other than that, I'm ignorant. 

I suppose the lack of medical care trumps everything else. A child who grows up with medical care can live to adulthood and have a chance to escape the cult. A child who doesn't get lifesaving medical care just plain doesn't get to grow up. That trumps patriarchy, lack of education, and most other abuses. 

 

[RosyDaisy]

Pentecostals I know believe in women working, skirts/dresses only, long hair, no makeup/jewelry, birth control (abortion is a sin), modern medicine, no tv. They are sociable, unlike some of the fundies we snark on. However, each church is different and YMMV.

[Ali]

Pentecostals do not all hold the same beliefs. I think it is best to think of their beliefs being on a spectrum. Some are fine with modern medicine and others are opposed to taking any medicine. Some are fine with women wearing pants and others are skirts only. It depends on the denomination and the individual churches.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

Followers of Christ may be categorized as a type of Pentecostals, but I understand that they don't represent most Pentecostal churches. They are a fundamentalist cult by almost anyone's definition. Just like mainstream Baptists may cringe at being "lumped in" with Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, I'm sure many Pentecostals dislike being conflated with groups like Followers of Christ. 

I hope Idaho legislators can do more about this bill next year. Those poor kids. 

[RosyDaisy]

Pentecostals do not all hold the same beliefs. I think it is best to think of their beliefs being on a spectrum. Some are fine with modern medicine and others are opposed to taking any medicine. Some are fine with women wearing pants and others are skirts only. It depends on the denomination and the individual churches.

Exactly. The ones I know are what I consider moderate since they are sociable and send their kids to public schools, but are still fundie.

[roddma]

How sad and inexcusable. Ironic they talk about choice regarding home birth no medical care etc but their poor kids don't have choices. Yet they don't figure themselves into the equation of infant death rates for 1st world countries.

[unsafetydancer]

6 hours ago, roddma said:

How sad and inexcusable. Ironic they talk about choice regarding home birth no medical care etc but their poor kids don't have choices. Yet they don't figure themselves into the equation of infant death rates for 1st world countries.

That's exactly what bothers me about it. By all means as an adult who can understand what might happen refuse medical treatment. At least an adult would be able to weigh up the possible consequesnces and decide for themselves what they think is best but these kids don't have a chance. The decision is made for them and they have no way of arguing for what they want. Letting little kids die is just plain wrong.

[violynn]

16 minutes ago, unsafetydancer said:

That's exactly what bothers me about it. By all means as an adult who can understand what might happen refuse medical treatment. At least an adult would be able to weigh up the possible consequesnces and decide for themselves what they think is best but these kids don't have a chance. The decision is made for them and they have no way of arguing for what they want. Letting little kids die is just plain wrong.

As parents, we are meant to be advocates for our child; making the best decisions for their well- being, first among those health.  To set aside the most fundamental needs a child has in the world for any reason is so irresponsible, selfish and counterintuitive I cannot fathom how parents do it.  Not protecting the most helpless in our society just feels indicative of a breakdown in what we should instinctively know to do.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

4 hours ago, violynn said:

As parents, we are meant to be advocates for our child; making the best decisions for their well- being, first among those health.  To set aside the most fundamental needs a child has in the world for any reason is so irresponsible, selfish and counterintuitive I cannot fathom how parents do it.  Not protecting the most helpless in our society just feels indicative of a breakdown in what we should instinctively know to do.

(My bold) I completely agree that one of a parent's most important jobs is advocating for her/his child(ren). 

I debated whether to bring up this case. (This link is to the couple's lawyers, so it's a slanted version. I chose it because it had a lot of details.) A couple had their infant daughter taken from their legal custody because the mother disagreed with an E.R. doctor about her 5 week old needing an immediate spinal tap. (She wanted to see if the fluids and other treatments helped first.) Police came and held the mother in a separate room while the staff performed a spinal tap on the baby. The test was negative for meningitis and the parents regained custody soon after. (48 hours, I think?)

This situation didn't have anything to do with religious fundamentalism or faith healing. I didn't find any articles linking it to the failure of legislators to close the faith healing loophole to protect Idaho's children. But I wondered if any of those politicians had this case in mind or talked about it with each other. As an example of parents having their right to make choices in their child's best interest taken away from them. Hmm.

Here are some more neutral links about the case:

This is a good article from ABC news.

The couple lost their lawsuit upon appeal.

Sorry this was so long.

ETA--It appears that some of the points that make this case a bit different from others are: the doctor seemed to agree with the mother until police came, the medical staff gave the baby steroids without permission before police came, and no one contacted the father or would let the mother call him. Maybe the medical staff made the right call, but they did it in a way I find troubling.

[Howl]

I lived in SW Colorado for 15 years starting in 1978, and this thread led to remembering a church in the area we were aware of called Church of the First Born.  Apparently they believed in faith healing only, although someone who went to the hospital in our relatively small town was attended to by a nurse who was Church of the First Born (go figure).  My ex worked in the summers with one of the Church of the First Born members who was quite a wonderful guy;  extremely personable and pleasant in every way as was his wife.  

I'd always assumed that Church of the First Born was a Christian off-shoot church, but recently I've read a few things that lead me to believe it is a Mormon off shoot.   It was going strong in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  I found this 2010 article titled: Faith Healing: Church of the First Born - Criminal or Not? so the issues related to child death have been going on for a long, long time. 

Quote

 

....Seth Asser, a Rhode Island pediatrician who has published a study about children who died after their parents offered them prayer without medical help says the Church of the First Born is one of the biggest offenders of child neglect using religion as its base.  The Church of the First Born, well-known in Oklahoma, and Followers of Christ, an offshoot of the church that is located in the Pacific Northwest, together are responsible for more child deaths than any other group.

Asser estimates that each year, up to two dozen children die each year because their parents refuse to get them medical help.  Asser and a child advocate, Rita Swan, have studied 172 child deaths, due to what they called religion-based medical neglect and found that 140 of them would have had a 90 percent chance of survival and 18 others a 50 percent chance of survival with proper medical care.  “Most were ordinary illnesses that no one dies from – appendicitis, pneumonia … – and many of them died slow, horrible deaths, without the benefit of (pain-relief) medicine,” he said.  Tulsa World

Swan is a former Christian Scientist who left that church after her young son died without medical attention while a Christian Science practitioner prayed for him.  She founded Child Inc. in Sioux City, Iowa, to fight religion-based medical neglect.  Members of the Church of the First Born have been involved in several child death court cases over the last three decades. 

Full text here: https://newsdeskinternational.wordpress.com/2010/12/31/faith-healing-church-of-the-first-born-criminal-or-not/

 

[picklepizzas]

17 hours ago, Howl said:

The Church of the First Born, well-known in Oklahoma, and Followers of Christ, an offshoot of the church that is located in the Pacific Northwest, together are responsible for more child deaths than any other group.

interesting that the article you quoted suggests the followers of christ are actually a mormon offshoot rather than a Pentecostal one.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

I found a good graphic which summarizes the religious exemptions to medical care for sick children for all 50 states.

 

It's from this website--

http://childrenshealthcare.org/?page_id=311

[onlyme]

I am in the same area as the Oregon church that keeps popping up in the news. (they were the ones prosecuted for deaths.) Interestingly, at least ours, dress in a normal, almost 80s style, like all the women seem to have feathered hair. But they wear jeans. The boys mostly dress like they are planning to go hunting in the near future, with camo and flannel. But that isn't unusual for my area-just when you see them in a big group, it's noticeable.  There was a store near me that I went to a lot that was owned by a family from there and they were really nice. When it was sold I was bummed. The kids go to public schools but they very much stick to their own. There is a book about the church in our area. I haven't read it, but a friend of mine did because she works in the schools so encounters them a lot. I'll find out the title, in case any one is interested. 

Interestingly. They all go to McDonalds after church. Like they totally swarm the place. I mean, if I went to a church that wouldn't let me get medical care, I think I would not eat at McDonalds. Not on a regular basis like that..... 

I have a cousin who is very Pentecostal. I never even thought of them as being remotely close as far as denominations go. 

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

@onlyme, I would be interested if you would be willing to find out the title of that book. My only basis for saying upthread that the Followers of Christ Church is a pentecostal type church is Wikipedia, so not the best source.

ETA--I found this site.

http://culteducation.com/

Maybe it will have some useful information. If I get some time I'll see what I can find.