Parents try to pray away an inflamed, and then burst appendix, in a country where routine surgery will fix it; sixteen year old boy dies.
They basically get away with it.
Awesome.
~Mooglets
FROM time to time, bizarre reports surface about the activities – or rather, the non-activities – of Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath. But this one takes the bagel.
Having vowed not to speak on Saturdays, a woman in Jerusalem kept schtum about a baby she’d just given birth to.
According to this report, she secreted the infant under her dress with the umbilical cord still attached, hid the placenta in a bag, and refused to speak to anyone including paramedics.
No one knew that the baby had been born until the woman’s concerned husband went to a local Jerusalem synagogue, and asked the rabbi for a blessing.
When the rabbi asked why, he said his wife had given birth and was sitting at home with the baby, according to paramedic Ariel Atias.
The rabbi called Hatzalah emergency medical services and paramedics showed up to help take the baby and mother to the hospital. But they met with resistance, said another paramedic Yoni Hacohen.
The couple was sitting in the bedroom and wouldn’t let us into the room. I thought it was due to modesty, so I asked a female paramedic to go in there and send the father out. But a few minutes later she came out and said the woman wouldn’t communicate with her in any way. Nor would she allow them to see the baby, who was still hidden under her dress.
Eventually some neighbours suggested a rabbinical tribunal be formed to relieve the woman of her vow, but even after that she refused to speak or communicate.
Two hours later police and rescue teams had to restrain the woman. The umbilical chord was cut and both mother and baby were rushed to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Atias said:
It’s a miracle the baby is safe and healthy. The incident could have ended badly.
By the time they reached the hospital, Shabbat had ended and the woman had resumed speaking.
When the religious activity puts the health and mortality of a child at risk, that’s where I draw the fucking line.
~Mooglets
A cleric in Pakistan’s Punjab province has warned that a jihad would be launched against polio vaccination teams at a time when the World Health Organisation has expressed concern at the emergence of new cases of the disease across the country.
Maulvi Ibrahim Chisti of Muzaffargarh district declared the anti-polio campaign as “un-Islamic” and announced at the local mosque that jihad (holy war) should be carried out against the polio vaccination team.
Chisti made the remarks after finding out that a vaccination team had entered Khan Pur Bagga Sher area of Muzaffargarh and asked families to cooperate with the campaign.
The cleric went to the largest mosque in the area and declared that polio drops were “poison” and against Islam, The Express Tribune reported.
He warned that if the vaccination team forced anyone to participate in the campaign, then jihad was “the only option”.
As a result, the polio team returned to Muzaffargarh city without carrying out any immunisation and reported the matter to senior officials.
A police inquiry was ordered and a raid was conducted in the cleric’s area.
However, Chisti escaped by the time the police arrived.
Residents said the cleric had tried to convince them that the polio campaign was a “Western conspiracy” to render the population impotent.
After the police raid, the vaccination team returned to the area to implement the immunisation campaign.
The WHO recently expressed concern over a spike in polio cases across Pakistan, particularly the country’s restive northwestern tribal region, where around 150,000 children have reportedly not been immunised.
According to cases recorded by the National Institute of Health, the total number of polio cases reported this year is at least 21.
Eight cases were detected in the Khyber tribal region. Polio cases have also been reported in areas like Rajanpur district of Punjab and Larkana district of Sindh that were free of the virus since 2004-05.
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That’s right, religion trumps health. Obviously.
~Mooglets
I’m sorry, but when an adult consciously makes the decision that his or her religion is more important than the life of their child, that’s the point at which I say fuck you, follow the law or your children go to better homes.
~Mooglets
The Girl Scouts of USA have withstood an arrant assualt from conservative legislators this year, having been both characterized as a “radicalized organization” that supports abortions and the homosexual agenda, and accused of partnering with the recently oft-beleaguered Planned Parenthood by GOP lawmakers. Now, the Scouts are being attacked by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their “offensive” program materials and alleged association with groups that conflict with Catholic teaching.
Coinciding with the Scouts’ 100th anniversary celebrations, U.S. Catholic bishops have launched an official inquiry:
The new inquiry will be conducted by the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth. It will look into the Scouts’ “possible problematic relationships with other organizations’’ and various “problematic’’ program materials, according to a letter sent by the committee chairman, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne, Ind., to his fellow bishops. […]
Girl Scout leaders hope the bishops’ apprehensions will be eased once they gather information. But there’s frustration within the iconic youth organization — known for its inclusiveness and cookie sales — that it has become such an ideological target, with the girls sometimes caught in the political crossfire.
And the Catholic leaders are also attacking the organization for its supposed connection to Planned Parenthood. The Scouts have consistently and unequivocally denied this accusation, which still has yet to be proven true. The supposed connection between the groups stems from a Girl Scout workshop at a 2010 United Nations event in which an International Planned Parenthood brochure was made available to girls in attendance. The brochure was aimed at young people with HIV and contained pertinent information on how to safely lead active sex lives. Spokespersons for the Scouts maintain that the organization possessed no advance knowledge of the brochure, and thus played no role in distributing it.
The smears against the Girl Scouts, like the Planned Parenthood claim, are a manufactured controversy from right-wing publications. “It’s been hard to get the message out there as to what is true when distortions get repeated over and over,’’ said Gladys Padro-Soler, the Girl Scouts’ director of inclusive membership strategies. The Scouts have addressed most if not all of their critics’ concerns on their official website.
The Scouts also maintain that they do not take a position or develop materials on issues in relation to human sexuality, birth control, abortion, and that “parents or guardians make all decisions regarding program participation that may be of a sensitive nature.”
At least one quarter of the organization’s 2.3. million members are reported to be Catholic, so officials worry that an attack from the Catholic church could further drive down participation in the organization. “For us, there’s an overarching sadness to it,’’ said Girl Scouts’ spokeswoman, Michelle Tompkins. “We’re just trying to further girls’ leadership.’’
HERE’S what a woman in Texas now faces if she seeks an abortion.
Under a new lawthat took effect three weeks ago with the strong backing of Gov. Rick Perry, she first must typically endure an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina. Then she listens to the audio thumping of the fetal heartbeat and watches the fetus on an ultrasound screen.
She must listen to a doctor explain the body parts and internal organs of the fetus as they’re shown on the monitor. She signs a document saying that she understands all this, and it is placed in her medical files. Finally, she goes home and must wait 24 hours before returning to get the abortion.
“It’s state-sanctioned abuse,” said Dr. Curtis Boyd, a Texas physician who provides abortions. “It borders on a definition of rape. Many states describe rape as putting any object into an orifice against a person’s will. Well, that’s what this is. A woman is coerced to do this, just as I’m coerced.”
“The state of Texas is waging war on women and their families,” Dr. Boyd added. “The new law is demeaning and disrespectful to the women of Texas, and insulting to the doctors and nurses who care for them.”
That law is part of a war over women’s health being fought around the country — and in much of the country, women are losing. State by state, legislatures are creating new obstacles to abortions and are treating women in ways that are patronizing and humiliating.
Twenty states now require abortion providers to conduct ultrasounds first in some situations, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization. The new Texas law is the most extreme to take effect so far, but similar laws have been passed in North Carolina and Oklahoma and are on hold pending legal battles.
Alabama, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Mississippi are also considering Texas-style legislation bordering on state-sanctioned rape. And what else do you call it when states mandate invasive probes in women’s bodies?
“If you look up the term rape, that’s what it is: the penetration of the vagina without the woman’s consent,” said Linda Coleman, an Alabama state senator who is fighting the proposal in her state. “As a woman, I am livid and outraged.”
States put in place a record number of new restrictions on abortions last year, Guttmacher says. It counts 92 new curbs in 24 states.
“It was a debacle,” Elizabeth Nash, who manages state issues for Guttmacher, told me. “It’s been awful. Last year was unbelievable. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
Yes, there have been a few victories for women. The notorious Virginia proposal that would have required vaginal ultrasounds before an abortion was modified to require only abdominal ultrasounds.
Yet over all, the pattern has been retrograde: humiliating obstacles to abortions, cuts in family-planning programs, and limits on comprehensive sex education in schools.
If Texas legislators wanted to reduce abortions, the obvious approach would be to reduce unwanted pregnancies. The small proportion of women and girls who aren’t using contraceptives account for half of all abortions in America, according to Guttmacher. Yet Texas has some of the weakest sex-education programs in the nation, and last year it cut spending for family planning by 66 percent.
The new Texas law was passed last year but was held up because of a lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights. In a scathing opinion, Judge Sam Sparks of Federal District Court described the law as “an attempt by the Texas legislature to discourage women from exercising their constitutional rights.” In the end, the courts upheld the law, and it took effect last month.
It requires abortion providers to give women a list of crisis pregnancy centers where, in theory, they can get unbiased counseling and in some cases ultrasounds. In fact, these centers are often set up to ensnare pregnant women and shame them or hound them if they are considering abortions.
“They are traps for women, set up by the state of Texas,” Dr. Boyd said.
The law then requires the physician to go over a politicized list of so-called dangers of abortion, like “the risks of infection and hemorrhage” and “the possibility of increased risk of breast cancer.” Then there is the mandated ultrasound, which in the first trimester normally means a vaginal ultrasound. Doctors sometimes seek vaginal ultrasounds before an abortion, with the patient’s consent, but it’s different when the state forces women to undergo the procedure.
The best formulation on this topic was Bill Clinton’s, that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Achieving that isn’t easy, and there is no silver bullet to reduce unwanted pregnancies. But family planning and comprehensive sex education are a surer path than demeaning vulnerable women with state-sanctioned abuse and humiliation.
This is seriously one of the most disgusting articles I’ve read recently.
~Mooglets
A group of faith healers who claim they have miracle cures for cancer and HIV have been condemned as “irresponsible, even criminal” by a professor of complementary medicine, following a BBC Newsnight investigation.
The group of healers, collectively known as ThetaHealing, claim that their technique - which focuses on thought and prayer - can teach people to use their natural intuition and “brain wave cycle” to “create instantaneous physical and emotional healing.”
ThetaHealing have about 600 practitioners in the UK who charge up to £100 per session.
But the healers’ claims have been called “criminal” and “not supported by any kind of evidence” by Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, whose unit not only carry out their own studies but also assess those done by other researchers.
Newsnight recorded Warrington-based ThetaHealing practitioner Jenny Johnstone - who charges £30 for a telephone call or £400 for a course - making a number of claims about the technique, including:
“There was a baby I worked on over the telephone and from one day to the next the cancer in his stomach had just disappeared.”
Professor Ernst says such claims are “irresponsible, even criminal”.
He believes that the ThetaHealing group try to distinguish themselves from the other 20,000 faith healers in the UK by applying a “veneer of science”, but says “it’s still nonsense”.
‘Instant healing’
Repeated clinical trials appear to show that although such faith healing might make people feel better, it does not cure disease. Professor Ernst conducted one such trial which pitched faith healers against actors pretending to be faith healers and found the actors performed better than the healers.
“There was never any suggestion I should go back to my doctor, which is what I needed to do,” he told us.One former client of ThetaHealing - who did not wish to be identified - told the BBC that he was “angry and embarrassed” that he had wasted £1,200 on their healing and missed two years of proper medical treatment.
On ThetaHealing’s website it says that Vianna Stibal, the American founder of the group, “facilitated her own instant healing from cancer in 1995”.
It also says that Ms Stibal conducts seminars around the world to teach people about ThetaHealing, and that she has trained teachers and practitioners who are now working in 14 countries.
Earlier this month, Ms Stibal visited the UK to address a meeting at the London School of Economics (LSE).
At the meeting Ms Stibal responded to a question from an audience member who asked if it was possible for ThetaHealing to make an amputated leg grow back:
“I believe it’s possible to grow it back… a lady grew back her ovary… you can grow back a leg. I’ve seen people grow back,” she told attendees.
Some of the 100 people who attended the event told a BBC researcher that they were reassured about the legitimacy of the group by the fact that the meeting was being held at the LSE.
The LSE told Newsnight that ThetaHealing’s meeting was a “normal commercial booking”.
Further remarks made by Vianna Stibal at the London meeting, whereby she claimed that ThetaHealing could effectively reduce HIV to undetectable levels, have also alarmed Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust.
“The fact is we’ve seen charlatans of this kind all the way through the HIV epidemic,” Lisa Power of the Trust told Newsnight. “Those charlatans are more dangerous than ever now that we have effective treatment.”
Ms Power worries that some patients could put their lives at risk by delaying taking effective anti-retroviral drugs in favour of pursuing faith healing.
Both Vianna Stibal and Jenny Johnstone refused to answer questions from Newsnight. Ms Johnstone still insists she has healed a baby’s stomach cancer, but said there was no point in her trying to prove it because the BBC would not believe her anyway.
From BBC News Please excuse me while I swear a bit. I fucking hate ‘faith healers’ and ‘alternative therapists’ and ‘psychics’. All with an equal burning passion, likened to the power of a thousand burning suns. I hate them. I fucking hate them. These people are nothing but predatory assholes. Some may be deluded into thinking they really are imbued with fantastical powers, but most are simply assholes out to make a quick buck. They don’t have the science to back them. They don’t even have the slightest shred of evidence to back them. Yet they are given a veneer of respectability and con people at every turn. Assholes. These people prey on the weak, the desperate, the gullible, the people who have no more hope and the people who are themselves deluded. It sickens me, it really does. I swear, we need to have a law in place, especially for those making medical claims. Prove it. Prove that you can do what you claim, by going through strict scientific testing - like every drug and treatment offered by real medical staff - and then you can peddle it. But of course, none of them will be willing to do that, because none of them will pass the tests. None of them will get so far as a minute into the testing before being shown to be assholes peddling bullshit. There’s a quote from Tim Minchin that covers this nicely: ‘Do you know what we call alternative medicine that works? Medicine!’ Because if this stuff was proven effective, rather than less than placebo, it would have long been integrated into real medical practice. But no. the people who peddle this shit won’t accept that, either. They’ll come up with all sorts of asinine conspiracy theories instead. Bull. Shit. As you can tell from this little rant, I’m not only an atheist, but also a strident skeptic. If you can’t prove the veracity of your claims? I won’t accept them and will call you on your bullshit. That simple. ~Mooglets
A widespread belief exists that even if it is not true religion is worth practicing because of its benefits. In fact, any health benefits are problematical. The only definite positive correlation between religious practice and health is with church-going, and it is not proven that this is anything supernatural. It is far more likely simply to be the result of a healthier lifestyle among churchgoers. There’s no smoking or drinking in church, except for a sip of watered-down wine. For some reason, those who study the relationship between religion and health never seem to include nonbelievers as a “control sample,” which does not strike me as very good science practice.
The life-style interpretation agrees with the evidence that less religious nations are happier and healthier. According to the study by sociologist Phil Zuckerman, the godless societies of Scandinavia rank near the top in every measure of societal and personal health.
And, what about the significant negative impact that religion has on health? Between 1975 and 1995 at least 172 children in the United Stated died, perhaps 140 of medically curable illnesses, because their parents refused them medical treatment for religious reasons [E. Gunn, “Death By Prayer,” Freethought Today (September, 2008): 6-7]. Many more are undoubtedly harmed by lack of immunizations and other refusals by religious parents to provide modern medical treatments and preventative measures. Parents are allowed to do this because of unconscionable religious exemptions in child abuse prevention laws.Simply put, no basis exists for the claim often made by believers that religion is necessary for a person to live a healthy, happy, and moral life. Religion blinds, deafens, and numbs us to the reality around us and though this may temporarily soothe our anxieties, like drugs or alcohol, there is a painful price to be paid down the road for such cowardly denial and self-defeating ignorance. Not only can we be both well and good without God, we can be better.
(Source: The Huffington Post, via helvetebrann)
