In case you’re not subscribed to the post from earlier this week,”Canadian government kills First Nations girl out of misguided respect for faith“, you may have missed today’s comment from momand2boys on her (I’m assuming “mom” = female) experiences as a young Jehovah’s Witness. I want to put this above the fold because it raises several imporant points. First, the comment:
I grew up a devout Jehovah’s Witness. Words cannot describe how truly religious I was. I would have fought tooth and nail against a blood transfusion for any reason from a very young age. Children of Jehovah’s Witnesses are often taken from their parents by court order for blood transfusions and my childhood was filled with stories of parents smuggling their babies out of hospitals against doctors orders. I had a friend who died in a car accident when I was 15 – she died because she didn’t have a blood transfusion. These people were applauded and the ones who did (even infants) were seen as martyrs. [JAC: see this page about their martyrdom.] We were taught from a very young age that if we were before a judge we were to say that taking a blood transfusion was akin to being raped and that we would fight it against all power. We carried cards to say no blood transfusion. It was a completely consuming part of our identity.
I mention this because at 14 or 11 or heck, even 7 I would have fought to the death to not have a blood transfusion. My eternal life depended on it. But, I never had a chance to think otherwise. I was completely indoctrinated at a young age. This is a long response to why you can’t just let a young person make this decision.
In general parents should have broad latitude when it comes to their child. But, what if I don’t want my child to ride in a car seat because it isn’t traditional and they don’t do it in some other countries? What if Jesus told me that car seats are bad? What should happen? The same standard should apply to medical care including vaccines, blood transfusions, and chemotherapy. A parent’s right to do what they want with their child should never trump the child’s right to life.
This is a frank and thoughtful comment, and I’m grateful for it.
One important issue here is whether a child’s wish for religiously-based or “alternative” treatment should be “respected” if the child’s life is in danger and if science-based medicine is a far better choice. In articles on the Web, I’ve seen several people argue that Makayla Sault, the First Nations child in Canada who just died from leukemia, should have had her own decision to discontinue chemotherapy respected and followed because, after all, she vehemently argued to discontinue chemotherapy. (In fact, nobody in the Canadian judiciary or government fought that decision, and they were remiss in their laxity.) But the whole point of those child-protection laws against faith healing that do exist in the U.S. is that children lack the maturity and understanding to make such decisions. The comment above drives that point home.
Children of medicine-rejecting faiths like Christian Science and the Jehovah’s Witnesses are often heavily indoctrinated in the faith, and adamantly refuse transfusions or regular medical care. But do they have the experience and knowledge to make such decisions? My response is “hell no!” Of course if we’re to allow adults to make their own medical-care decisions, then there must be a more or less arbitrary cut-off age. But that age is not 11. For children below the cut-off age, the parent’s and children’s wishes should not matter when it’s a life-or-death issue and when death or permanent damage will ensue if science-based medicine is rejected in favor of faith-based treatments. The state must intervene.
But of course who are the parents who reject modern medical treatment? They are simply the grown-up children that remain indoctrinated. So why punish them? (This is just one instance of someone not having free will about what they do—which is of course the case for everyone.)
We should punish them for the same reasons we punish anyone who hurts other people deliberately or through neglect: to deter others from doing the same thing (an environmental influence that can feed into the brain’s decision program); to “fix” them if their bad behavior can be remedied through other interventions in prison or in hospital; and to keep them away from society (in the case of a parent who refuses to give medical care to their children, you take away the kids as well).
If you read about these cases in the U.S. you’ll be horrified at how lightly the parents get off. The Christian Science parents of Ashley King, a girl in Arizona who died—horribly—from bone cancer when her parents refused to take her to a doctor (she had over a 50% chance of cure), were given only probation without supervision. In other words, they weren’t punished at all. Ashley’s mother further claimed that she had done nothing wrong—that she was a “good mother.” That’s hogwash. But that’s also faith.
*******
Finally, you may have heard about the measles outbreak caused by a failure to vaccinate children, many of whom got infected at Disneyland in California. Such vaccinations should be mandatory for all kids who don’t have medical exemptions (i.e., a weakened immune system), and there should be no exemptions based on religion. After all, unvaccinated children endanger not only themselves, but other children as well.
But there’s little chance that such exemptions will be eliminated. The New York Times, in an article about the mini-epidemic of measles, includes this bit at the end (my emphasis):
The battle [about vaccination regulations] has moved to state legislatures, where lawmakers have sought to make it easier for parents to obtain exemptions from vaccination requirements. However, all 31 bills introduced from 2009 to 2012 that would have loosened the exemption process were defeated, said Saad B. Omer, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Emory University who studies vaccine refusal. Three out of five bills that sought to tighten the requirement passed, he said.
California tightened its “personal belief” exemption law last year, requiring parents to submit a form signed by a health care provider. But Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, added a religious exemption at the last minute; parents who choose that option do not need a doctor’s signature.
The first paragraph is great; the second not so much. And remember that there are still religious exemption laws in many of those states, so we’re just talking about “loosening” them, probably to include reasons other than religion as valid to get an exemption. As for Jerry Brown, his decision was execrable. And I thought he was an atheist. . .
I’ve known my best friend since we were elementary school kids back in the 70s. His family was Jehovah Witnesses and he carried a card and wore a medical bracelet stating that he was not to receive any blood transfusions or blood products due to his faith. He didn’t come to hold this belief after long consideration and reflection like an adult might do. He was raised in this faith and indoctrinated that this was “God’s plan” for him. Thankfully he was never in a position to need blood and he left the Witnesses as an adult. We have talked about how easy it is to brainwash your children because they trust their parents, family and church members as authority figures. Children do not have the mental capacity for critical thought to make an informed decision on such issues. This is why the state has to get involved when the faith of the parents places a child’s life in danger of harm and/or death.
Sadly neither do most of JH parents 😉
Brown’s action was unconscionable, regardless of his faith or lack thereof. Shame.
I would have said the same respectful thing except for the rage induced blindness I am having to endure due to Brown’s lack of respect for human life.
Wonder how many Californians suddenly found faith?
Jerry Brown attended a Jesuit seminary, and married his current wife in a Roman Catholic church, and he still self-identifies as Catholic.
During his first Presidential run he shrewdly put himself on the ballot in Maryland, America’s most Catholic state, to prove he was a viable candidate for POTUS. He recently invoked the same religious texts as Obama did re good treatment of immigrants.
He has described his political career as having a “certain missionary component to trying to do good in the public realm that is parallel to doing good in the religious call. And civic engagement and public service at its best reflects the Christian commitment to do justice, seek mercy,…”
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/25/what-is-jerry-browns-religion/
Beat me by 4 minutes. Damn. Ya gotsta be quick here.
I wonder if Brown would agree to such an exemption based on private personal preference. That is, if Brown or his assigns pressed a person for an answer to justify the person’s position, would Brown accept as a reply, “No comment,” or “I don’t owe you an explanation”?
Considering that Governor Brown is pro-choice on abortion and a strong supporter of same sex marriage, it would appear that he doesn’t take all Catholic teachings too seriously.
It was a different church back in the late 60’s-70’s.
Minor point, but I never knew Jerry Brown was a former Jesuit seminarian.
A fuller quotation from the Interwebs that I cannot quickly verify:
But he is a politican, at the end of the day.
I have a friend who was studying to be a faith healer. When I asked her about those situations where parents use prayer or other faith methods on a child who has a problem which could be cured through mainstream scientific medicine but will almost certainly be fatal without it her answer chilled me.
She said I couldn’t understand because I believed death was final.
When I asked for clarification she dithered about and essentially refused. ‘We just think too different, etc.’ When I mentioned the word “murder” she gave a shocked little cry and abruptly changed the subject.
Sastra was being rude again. Yup.
My impression was that the idea is that anyone who dies because of faith — their own or that of their parents — is in a blessed state. Their afterlife (whatever you think it is) will be so much better. Or perhaps it won’t matter. The faith-based attitude is a beautiful, beautiful thing in itself. Intention is everything. Belief is everything. The world is an illusion. There is no distinction between life and death, it is only our lack of faith which gets in the way of recognizing this.
She is a genuinely kind person herself — and an R.N. Her philosophy is wicked. Not just wrong. Pernicious.
Next time, try to argue that refusing trivial solutions to save your life amounts to suicide, something which will end you in Hell, or so I’m told.
By all means report the reaction.
Won’t work. Although she was studying with a Christian Scientist (among others) she’s a New Ager and doesn’t believe in Hell or damnation. We all join back into the Universal Mind of Love at the pace and on the path we need.
And in the meantime we blithely justify murder.
What? The worms will be fatter and will have smiles on their (lip-less) faces as the chow down on your putrifying flesh?
Does she have any evidence for her ideas about the afterlife, because I’ve got plenty of evidence from experimental archaeology and palaeontology about the process of rotting and decomposition that go on in a body, whether buried or not.
Or is she one of these people who have a problem with applying evidence to questions?
Yes, to the last. On multiple levels.
This is a person who should not experiment with what I call “practical toxicology”. Or as most other people call it “cooking”.
I used to make explosives too. I’ve got a more complete set of fingers than my chemistry teacher, though he beats me on the eardrum front.
I’ve wrestled with the religious medical issues quite a bit. My father and his brother grew up in a home dominated by their Christian Science mother. My father was fortunate to have rejected Christian Science as a young man, but my uncle died of AIDS-defining illnesses without ever having been diagnosed, treated or even acknowledging the wasting and dementia he began to suffer in later months.
I think the painful and difficult question is this: If we know that a religious belief is potentially destructive and harmful, does it really matter whether the person affected is a child or a young person or a fully grown adult?
I know it’s an actual slippery slope, but I also know that my uncle was a victim of religion. His long-term life partner was likely also affected. I am all for putting the case of religious medical neglect of children FIRST, but I’d like to hear a well-informed debate on the ethics of allowing children to be indoctrinated with psychologically damaging doctrines that they will be stuck with later in life. Do we have an obligation to protect adults from the results of decades of conditioning, or is self-determination too important?
As Richard Dawkins has said and gets criticized a lot for, indoctrination is child abuse (or something like that). But it does seem like abuse to me.
Your post illustrates Jerry’s point that the parents who withhold treatment for religious reasons were most likely once the children of parents with the same beliefs. For better or worse, we do in the U.S. hold that grownups do have the right to forego their own medical treatment. If an adult is insane* or incapable I guess they may be institutionalized – but I imagine the bar and/or cost of that must be pretty high, based on the number of mentally ill homeless people.
* – And of course religious beliefs are specifically excluded from the medical definition of delusion.
There’s a hole in this, particularly with respect to the JWs.
as far as I can tell, the JWs’ prohibition on blood transfusion developed over a period of 10-15 years between (about) 1945 and the early 1960s. So it’s only quite recently that the doctrine has gone into it’s second generation of indoctrination.
If that analysis is accurate, then JWs who were adults when they began to eschew transfusions are either converts or were born into the faith between 1927 and, say, 1969 – in other words, they are between 85 and 46 years of age. Assuming the same distribution as the U.S. overall, that’s about 40% of the membership – so, adding in converts, perhaps half the congregation accepted the doctrine as adults. That’s a pretty big, if shrinking, hole!
Having said that, it’s still an irrational doctrine based on flawed interpretation of flawed scripture – and it is a doctrine pushed by authority on its adherents, enforced by the threat of shunning by the community. In other words, half the congregation was born into this dangerous cult, and the other half are credulous individuals brainwashed as adults. That children are so indoctrinated is sickening; that adults are so indoctrinated is only slightly less offensive but still sickening.
To mis-quote … I think it was Marvin The Paranoid Android, but it’s late at night … “It gives me a headache to think down to that level.”
Strange – “MOOT” has apparently “liked” my previous post but the web page doesn’t display a “like” option or even a “like” count. I deduce the presence of an “app” which is decidedly different to the web page.
I’m not seeing it, Aidan.
Me neither. So, are you using a browser, or a wordpress “app”?
Indeed, at https://apps.wordpress.org/
I’m using Chrome.
Makes one wonder why WP would not have that option on their regular old blog software..
Trying to drive/ pull people towards using the app. Which of course, won’t allow the blocking of adverts.
(That’s a blind guess. But if it’s true, they’d be about the 346th such company I’ve heard of playing that trick ; I was reviewing compass-clino apps last week, all of which just expose the same Android APIs and tie them to some basic database. and practically every one hampers usability by shoving averts into the users eyes. So they get excluded from further consideration.)
Now that you two have posted that, I do remember knowing that, back in the day when Gov. Moonbeam was so popular.
As long as all of this is left up to the states you are beating a dead horse as they say. You have no chance.
However, if they would ever have a national govt. that was worth anything they could pass federal legislation on this and override the states. It is simply the pathetic history of our country. At one time it was up to the state whether to be free or slave. It only took a war and about 600,000 dead to make the free side federal law. Otherwise you could still have slaves today in many states.
You have no right to medical care really until you are 65 and as far as the republicans are concerned – either afford insurance or bleed to death. So a bunch of folks with religious problems is just kind of like joining the club.
I hope Professor Ceiling Cat will permit me a single link for anyone who gets fired up enough on this topic to want to donate money:
Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty is a 501c3 non-profit charity that provides legal representation and counsel in cases of religious medical neglect. They do good work.
http://childrenshealthcare.org/
Yes, of course. I’m a big fan of Rita Swan and her organization. And they do GREAT work!
What I wonder about is whether this is not simply discrimination. An atheist lets their child die horribly: bad parent, punishment. A religious believer lets their child die horribly: all right then, we have to be tolerant of their beliefs.
If that isn’t discriminating, i.e. treating groups of people differently for no good reason, what is?
That kind of sounds like a possible legal argument but probably not. When it comes to discrimination I believe there are only a few specific things that apply – race, age gender and a couple of others. But this one would not. In fact, if discrimination for medical care was included, most of the country would be in jail.
Well, that would never work, but I’ll volunteer to send my Representative instead.
My comment was not intended as a legal argument, more as a moral one. Also I guess it would depend on the country whether it could be turned into a legal one…
Is there an implication there that “the legal position” is not always congruent with “the moral position”?
Shocked!. I tell you, I’m shocked! Such an implication. You’ll have the lawyers circling you like ravening land-sharks.
And “no good reason” = “simply by reason of their status,” which is sort of the definition of the word “discrimination.”
With the current SCOTUS I’ve seen all kinds of good policy knocked down – and bad policy held up – over the questions of whether there is a “compelling State interest” in having a given law (or not), and of whether the “equal protection” clause of the Constitution is effected or violated by the law.
I don’t understand how there could be a compelling interest served by not viewing the withholding of medical care equivalent to other forms of neglect – especially in a country where parents have been admonished and even arrested for letting 10 and 12 year olds sit in a car, or play in a park, unaccompanied by an adult. I also don’t understand how it is “equal protection” that a non-religious anti-vaxxer crackpot has to get a doctor’s note, a religious one does, but then another parent who doesn’t vaccinate – what? they forgot? didn’t understand the requirement? are disorganized or lazy or crazy? – is in trouble.
I’ve always been confounded about the fright JDubs have about blood sharing. I know where in the bibble the prohibition comes but didn’t their “savior” ask his followers to sit down with him for brunch one day and ask that they take and eat of his flesh and blood?
Given the last brunch event, you’d think that the clan would meet at least weekly weekly for blood drinking contests. And this week’s winner is: Brother Jason!
I just don’t get it.
A number of years ago, I was asked to be the trauma center liaison to the JW community regarding the issue of blood transfusion. The meeting started out with the usual attempts at hospital claptrap about diversity and JW rationalization but I was able to cut it short and keep to the point.
The bottom line was that we had judges on speed dial and would transfuse anyone who needed it under the age of 16. Anyone above sixteen was required to either be alert enough to reject a transfusion or in possession of a signed JW card that served as informed consent. We would not accept a third party claim that the patient was a JW without documentation. They started to grumble but I reminded them that if they thought this was an issue of their eternal soul, carrying a card seemed like a small price to pay.
One guy started in about how I obviously didn’t respect their beliefs, but he stopped when I simply agreed. We would treat minors per clinical protocol and adults were free to do as they wished. I didn’t have to respect their philosophy to accept their wishes.
It was a short meeting and we never had any trouble after that. I also didn’t serve on many committees afterward.
Great story. I think your’s is the best response in general to god botherers — just agree that you don’t respect bad beliefs religious or otherwise. That almost always stops a whiner in their tracks, since they think that they are delivering you a “Gotcha” on intolerance, racism, or whatever “ism” or special case they are calling for special treatment of.
Reblogged this on Fairy JerBear's Queer World News, Views & More From The City Different – Santa Fe, NM and commented:
I highly recommend this post. It presents some troubling situations where religious or so called “moral/ethical” objections are aloud to trim medical science and public health advice – often with tragic consequences:
And they will get louder!! (sp oops!)
This was a very well written comment and I wanted to say so when I read it but was busy at work. So, I will say it here: thank you momand2boys for pointing out what it is like to be a child indoctrinated into a faith. I knew a JW girl from childhood and she was just like this. I find children make the best fundamentalists and are the most fervent believers. Young minds are just this way.
Intellectual immaturity and fundamentalism are correlated? Who would have guessed?
Not only will children “parrot back” the indoctrination to they’ve been subjected, but the “feedback-loop” of parental approval plays a major and sinister part here, too: most children learn early to pick up subtle (or not so subtle) “clues” from their parents’ reactions to their behavior and instinctively tend to adopt actions and habits which gain them the most “approval” (or, on the other hand, to avoid punishment: “to avoid a loss is perceived as a gain”). We don’t “train” children how to “behave”- they train themselves by adopting a set of habits, in response to their environment, that appear to give the best perceived reward.
Most children will identify actions, or even potential actions, on their part which cause their parents distress or unhappiness as leading to a “loss” and are naturally reluctant to risk the loss of their main emotional support.
Another issue is that of trust: most children (I hope) perceive their parents as having their best interests at heart; the additional fact that what they offer seems to be a way out of the pain and discomfort the child is currently feeling makes it even more attractive to go with what they want.
These are the perfectly good reasons why a child should NEVER be allowed to make the final decision on these matters.
The evolutionary shrinks would point out that this behavioural response is (probably) a selected character for mammals in general and primates in particular.
In the wild, NOT doing what your care-giving parent tells you to, when they tell you, first time and every time, was likely to lead to the extinction of your particular twig of the tree of life.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the way that things “ought” to be. It’s just the way that things (probably) have been in the past. We live in different times now.
I’m worried we don’t have the luxury of even a little “loosening” of parental negligence laws in this case. The scary thing about the return of measles is that, unlike Ebola, it is *ferociously* contagious.
Since vaccinations don’t last a lifetime, adults are often among the vulnerable in an outbreak even if they were vaccinated as children. (We’re not talking a missed day of work here — you’re more likely than not to get pneumonia and there’s a good chance you’ll end up hospitalized.)
It also hits hardest at infants, at children who don’t get adequate nutrition (as was widely reported last week, half of all school-age children in the US now live in poverty), and at those who have other diseases or inherited vulnerabilities.
If you had measles as a child many years ago are you still immune?
Yes, I believe so. The reason boosters are needed is that:
1) Vaccines are not 100% effective so getting a vaccine will not guarantee immunity.
2) The vaccine given (MMR) contains a weakened form of the virus so although only 1 shot is needed to be vaccinated, it is not the same as being infected with the non-weakened form of the virus. B memory cells will be produced when the live non-weakened form as your body has had time to produce a strong antibody response which is not always guaranteed when a vaccine is used so boosters are required to “remind” the body to produce B memory cells.
I hope that I have not mangled that explanation. That said, you don’t want to be infected with measles as it can lead to serious health complications, so remember to get vaccinated! I will check how effective the vaccine is. From this website (see below) it seems the boosters are needed based on point 1).
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/pages/mmr-vaccine-when-needed.aspx
Ok, I found a good article which explains a bit about the immune response and possibly why vaccines are effective. Immunology is very complicated and multifaceted (I know when I studied it for a bit at University it practically fried my brain and we weren’t even given the entire story as we were 3rd year undergrads), so I will explain a few terms so you don’t have to continuously Google (I am assuming you are unfamiliar so if you are, my apologies):
1) There are two branches of the immune system, humoral and cellular. The humoral immune response is a non-specific general response which does not lead to the production of antibodies. In contrast, the cellular immune response is specific and leads to the production of antibodies and hence to lifelong immunity to a specific pathogen. NB: the humoral response feeds into the cellular response so there is no arbitrary cut-off of when the one begins and the other ends.
2) There are two cells which make up the cellular response: T and B cells.
3) There are 3 different types of T cell: helper T cells (further sub-divided into T1 and T2), cytotoxic T cells, and regulatory T cells (we didn’t look at the last type so I do not know what their role is). Cytotoxic T cells kill invaders inside cells whilst T helper cells help B cells and other immune cells to kill invaders.
4) Plasma cells are aka B cells. Plasma cells contain a B cell receptor (BCR) which can recognize specific antigens on pathogens, thereby shedding the BCR into antibodies upon recognition (only for certain types of pathogens). T cells can also activate B cells when an antigen has bound, so that the B cells undergoes differentiation (production of antibody secreting plasma cells and B memory cells) and proliferation (divides lots of times ). When the antigen is no longer present, the T and B cells die so that only B memory cells remain to recognize the same antigen if infection occurs again.
5) The paper mentions two different theories on immunity. One were plasma cells can continue to survive after an antigen encounter. We weren’t taught this (my understanding is that a differentiated plasma cell requires constant signals from antigens and T cells in order to not undergo cell death), so I don’t know much about this theory. The other is that lifelong immunity requires the presence of memory B cells (familiar territory).
6) A ton of signalling molecules are involved. The most important are chemokines which are used in the humoral response; they act as chemical attractants for immune cells to migrate to the site of infection. The TNF family are cytokines which are involved in cell proliferation and inflammation, and so have an important role in both the humoral and cellular immune responses.
Here’s the paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3238379/
Hope that helps!
Thanks for that explanation.
Very interesting, AK, thanks! I thought I knew a bit about the immune system, but it seems that bit was microscopic. 🙂
I’ll be rooting for my B memory cells.
Because people are vaccinating less, I got an MMR vaccine last Spring.
My wife needed a booster before her first pregnancy: test showed she had no immunity at all.
We don’t really know all that much about the waning of measles immunity in old age as it only became available in the late 60s and in UK it was not until the early 80s that coverage rates rose – so unvaccinated people would be likely to get the natural disease.
So roughly those aged over 40 have not been vaccinated.
I am aware of one follow up study at roughly 30 years after childhood immunisation which suggested anti-bodies were still OK.
We do know that about 5-10% of children do not get immunity to measles from the vaccine, hence (in UK anyway) a second dose is given which improves this rate (don’t remember by how much).
We know that in an epidemic, vaccinated children get measles,
BUT
Importantly, when children get measles after vaccination they get it MILDLY, without the nasty secondary problems that occur in the natural disease.
(This is also true of whooping cough)
There was an epidemic of measles a few years back in the republic of Ireland, 2000, where there there were three deaths in an area of the city with low (c 79%) coverage rates.
In my area we had an epidemic of measles, proven with swabs, and as we had high immunisation rates (c 97%) we only saw mild ‘modified’ measles, with mild unwellness and vague rashes, and most importantly, no ‘koplik’s spots’ (small slat-like grains/rash on inside of the cheeks) so making diagnosis difficult.
The same was true of an epidemic of whooping cough somehwat earlier, but at that we had many people who had not been vaccinated against whooping cough because of one doctors stupidity. We saw several children who were quite ill, and two or three needed admission – they were ALL the unvqccinated group. Lots of vaccinated children got mild whooping cough with the classical whoop and ‘100 days of cough’.
(As an aside, most doctors to-days have not seen measles and so would have trouble recognizing it!)
Sub
I just saw this thread now after coming home from work. It’s very hard to comment about this topic using my real name Mr. Coyne. I wish I could tell you what I know about this as a daughter of a Jehovah’s Witness and stepfather that was an Elder and lawyer who worked on cases involving blood transfusions with minors.
My first thought after reading just this post was the very first time I realized my parents had no regard for human life.
I was in the second grade. One of the kids next door who my mother dropped off to school each day and picked up from school each day informed me quietly that I should be very very careful not to be in a car accident and bleed. She said that if I were to bleed a lot and need blood my parents would let me die. She seemed very worried about me. I told her that was just crazy. Of course they would not let me die, that’s just a bunch of rules that were simply made to be ignored when your child is clinging to their life.
I unpacked my bookbag as I always did. Worked on my homework, had a snack and then waited for my father to come home. I asked them if I were bleeding to death in a car accident would they refuse to let anyone help me live by giving me blood?
Guess the answer my mother gave?
Damn.
+1
Man, that must have been a bummer of a day.
If we are going to permit anti-vaxxers it their children at risk, perhaps the waiver program should include a website which maps their homes so neighbors can be informed of the risk to themselves and their neighbors.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea – I think it’s a bad idea – but in my mind I’m comparing the anti-vax situation with that of the sex offender registry and the balance of privacy rights against public safety. My down-the-street neighbor is on the list: if the world is entitled to know he relations with a 15-year-old girlfriend when he was 18, surely I’m entitled to know if my neighbor’s kid could give me measles.
By the way, I don’t have any problem with my neighbor being charged with statutory rape because that’s what that was – his sentence was not as harsh as one for pedophilia might be, but he’s lumped together with them by association.
And anyway I don’t need a website to ID anti-vaxxers: the happily and proudly self-identify! Usually without being asked!
I suspect a typo of “did” for “died”, but it doesn’t much change things.
Doesn’t the management of “Disneyland” (or any other place of entertainment open to the general public) have a “duty of care” (or something equivalent in the US legal system) to what we’d call a “duty of care”. viz: the corporation has a duty to members of the public to ensure that their premises do not pose undue or unpredictable risks to visiting members of the public. Which is why fabrics in stage sets are non-flammable (descending from the classic argument about shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre), why fire exits are clearly marked.
It’s why symptomless carriers of typhoid aren’t allowed to work in restaurants.
Do Disney check their catering staff for transmissible diseases? Do they check their non-catering staff for their vaccination records before employment?
I may have misunderstood this, but don’t at least some parts of America require kids to present a full vaccination record before being allowed to register for schools? So I would expect similarly for the teachers.
From which it’s not that much of an extension to requiring (by force of court or threat of litigation of the companies on behalf the injured children) Disney to require proof of vaccination for all it’s cooking staff. Then public-facing staff. Then just make it all staff.
And then, as a matter of public safety (“Will no-one think of the children?”) … start requiring all visitors to Disney to present their vaccination passport on entry. Then just all visitors to any public place.
Does that sound a workable line of attack?
I should point out that I’ve been used to carrying a vaccination passport along with my regular passport (literally – I have a 2-passport wallet for precisely this purpose) for about a decade and a half now. It’s a non-issue to me. I can see that it might be to some of the more reactionary elements of society in America though. Somehow I think that the NRA candidate for President is likely to raise some objections though.
Well, we all have rights…
That link attempt was a complete failure, take 2…http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-dont-vaccinate-my-child-because-its-my-right-to,37839/
Andrea Martin’s great!
Just popped in again to thank you Mr. Coyne.
I have lived through a very terrifying life growing up in a home with a faithiest parent and I have many scars from the experience. I feel as if I have gone through torture and survived, even by a hair.
Just thinking about the many people I encountered in my days being used as a pawn to lure more people into the JW organization gives me sleepless nights. I was forced to go door to door as soon as I was five years old. I thought I was the best at going door to door because people did not slam the door on me when I talked to them after being prodded in the back to step up from behind the two that I was with. You know, if two or more are in my name…
I remember how proud the others would be, claiming victory over the fact that doors were shut on them. They said that was because they couldn’t handle the presence of Jehovah, they had no choice but to shut them out because the presence of Jehovah was just too strong for their sin.
I could never understand that.
I still feel so much guilt that older people who liked me actually came to the kingdom hall my mother attended. I keep wondering if they ended up being members, and if they still are, and if I was the one who caused them to be.
I live in so much mental agony over this.
(JAC Post 23 Nov 2014) Young American with terminal brain cancer ends her own life
“Brittany, (29), with the help of others, “put herself to sleep” with an overdose of drugs. Why do we allow our animals this mercy but prohibit it for members of our own species? Chalk up that heartless attitude to religion.”
(JAC Post 24 Jan 2015) Canadian government kills First Nations girl out of misguided respect for faith
“The child who was just killed by Canada was Makayla Sault, an 11-year-old… She was suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and died yesterday after the courts refused to intervene and continue her chemotherapy.”
Two “early” deaths, two terminal cancer sufferers. Both deaths the result of strong convictions. Both used to further the campaign against “religion”. Yet Whereas the first was applauded by JAC but condemned by religion the second was condemned by JAC and applauded by religion! While I wholeheartedly agree with JAC on the first case. On the second I’m not so happy: to (apparently) support life without qualification and ignore its quality slams the door on assisted dying.
Justifying assisted dying, which I believe JAC like me, fervently supports, relies on taking account of the temporal quality of the life in question: life is not held to be sacrosanct, inviolable, inviolate and does not have to be preserved by all means for as long as possible. The whole aim of assisted dying is the reduction of “unnecessary” suffering which can mean different things to different people but some allowance is always made for individual refusal on the grounds of belief.
The second post never raises the quality of life as perceived by the little girl herself at all. I think this is a rather misguided omission since it may prejudice the strength of the argument somewhat and relies entirely on the assumption that life at all costs is best, -which is exactly how “heartless religion” sees it and then seeks to oppose all cases of assisted dying.
I do not know enough of Makayla’s case but it seems that she had found her chemotherapy, to say the least, unpleasant and that she was firmly convinced (ok. entirely without empirical evidence) that she expected an afterlife. So supposing the ruling had been that all methods were to be employed to “save” her life or (rather more accurately to delay her death) what then would happen? She would be coerced by State intervention to undergo more of the “treatment” she did not want, and this for a 1 in 4’s chance of “success” -according to “informed” medical opinion which makes no claim to be infallible. Suppose further that she then refused food. Would it be a case of force-feeding her? All of this doesn’t sound that desirable for her at all.
Sorry, I meant “1 in 4’s chance of failure”: doesn’t affect my main argument anyway.
Um just for starters, the lady with brain cancer was terminal. Makayla was not. The lady with brain cancer was an adult who decided to die in peace rather than agony. Makalya was a child whose parents decided quackery would cure her. Their decisions led to her death.
That was not the point of my Devil’s Advocate comment. The detail of Makalya’s case is very different but I saw a sort of connection between the two cases. What worries me is the first depended on and rejoiced that Brittany was having her *choice* which we all feel is correct but underlying adverse criticism in the second case is the tacit assumption that Makalya’s and her parents’ choice should be over-ridden *because it was a foolish one*. A possibly dangerous double-standard for someone who campaigns for assisted dying?
I understand that in Ontario that one can assert on behalf of a relative that they are a JW and wouldn’t want a blood transfusion. Apparently this gets honoured unless one has explicit directives to the contrary! So if one has left this or other organizations, I recommend that one fills in one’s paperwork ASAP!