A 10-year-old study of child deaths near the historic Oregon Trail shows that many children’s lives could have been saved if they’d simple gotten proper medical treatment:
In a 1998 study published in the medical journal Pediatrics, Asser and Swan, herself a former Christian Scientist, documented 172 faith-related child deaths in the United States between 1975 and 1995. They found that 140 of the children died from conditions for which survival rates with medical care exceeded 90 percent.
Now 3 criminal cases in that area are reviving concerns about exemptions that most states grant to parents who rely on faith healing instead of doctors to treat sick children.
State laws across the nation exempt members of religious groups from prosecution if they choose faith healing over science. Asser and a colleague, Rita Swan, have been trying to get states to repeal such laws, arguing that safety should always come first, no matter what the parents believe. “We can’t legislate good parenting, but at least we shouldn’t have laws allowing bad parenting,” said Swan, who now heads the advocacy group Children’s Healthcare.
So far, only 5 states have repealed exemption laws: Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska and North Carolina. Of course, the very fact that these laws even exist is a direct result of religion influencing public policy, in this case followers of the anti-medical Christian Science. One of the 3 current cases reviving this issue involves the parents of a 16-year-old who died from complications of a urinary-tract blockage that triggered heart failure.
Doctors said a simple procedure could have saved his life.
The parents have pleaded not guilty to criminally negligent homicide. In another case, the parents are being charged with manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in the death of their 15-month-old daughter, whose condition again was treatable. And in the third case the parents face charges of reckless homicide in the death of their 11-year-old daughter due to complications from diabetes. Of course this issue is also be revived by the antivaccinationists who also think they know better than the doctors and who are putting their kids at serious risk.
