No joke, no rant.. Just do it.

Other posts on vaccinations/quack treatments:

• Vaccination conspiracy: The Ill-uminati – about the great conspiracy theory that is the evil doctor/drug company devils
• Homoeopathy, Letter to Boots and the 10:23 campaign – touted as a vaccine alternative.. pfft..
• Published rant! Mary Mackillop’s not-miracle – people praying to Mary Mackillop rather than getting proper medical treatment.

This is the article here: Neurological Rescue Mission: Communicating with Those Trapped within Their Brains. The bit that confirms it was not the coma man writing:

The tests determined that he doesn’t have enough strength and muscle control in his right arm to operate the keyboard. In her effort to help the patient express himself, it would seem that the speech therapist had unwittingly assumed control. This kind of self-deception happens all the time when this method — known as “facilitated communication” — is used.

So if, like me, you think it looks like the therapist was pointing the way: you’d have been spot on.

Rom Houben "uses" his touchscreen via the zealous assistance of his speech therapist Linda Wouters (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

Now onto what I had queued up:

Is it just me that thinks this “miracle coma man speaks” is probably not the words of the guy in the wheelchair?

See ninemsn’s video showing how the “communication” happens.

Notice some funny things?

How about the eyes closed (asleep?) but still able to supposedly type. Now I can type with my eyes closed, but I’ve been a touch typer for probably about 25 years now thanks to those early touch typing games back on the old mac plus and microbees. I (and anyone else) wouldn’t be able to do so with a touch screen however because I make use of the “home” marks on the J and F keys.

Or how about the speed at which the typing takes place. Hardly the sort of strained movements I’d expect from a person with that sort of crippling disability.

In short I think this is a well meaning/wishful thinking, but actually fraudulent and horrible scam.

Ouija board might replace the computer screen in this case.

The hand holding “communication facilitator” is the wheelchair version of a water diviner or ouija board. They’re taking someone’s hopes/memories of someone and imposing their own over the top. This guy might be trapped in there, but he sure doesn’t look like the words coming out are his.

Now admittedly it could be just a set-up for the cameras which happened because an over enthusiastic camera crew arrived when the poor guy was asleep and demanded some footage. So I’ll take that as a possibility given the guy looks asleep.

So I hope this story gets as much play as the original event (I’m betting it won’t) because just like the “climate emails” misquotes damage the overwhelming science and never quite get cleared up.

Now people have a sound-bite lodged in their brains that people can be misdiagnosed in a coma for 23 years and once given one of these “facilitators” can instantly communicate freely.

All it does is give false hope, misinformation or mean families hold on in vain against the advice of their doctors.

If you thought bottled water was a scam, listen to this.

Homoeopathy (homeopathy for the yanks?) is based around the idea that water has a memory. Although it seems the memory only works immediately after preparing a homoeopathic preparation (the past 4 billion odd years of floating through everything from oceans to dinosaur bladders to beer kegs is forgotten).

Homoeopathy has a memory right?

Anyhow, the water is shown/exposed/whispered something nasty that would cause the symptoms or make them worse (so for cancer you’d stir it with a cigarette? For stiffness you pour it over a playboy magazine.. makes sense right?), then diluted to the point of a drop of water in the pacific ocean or something similar. So basically turned back into plain old water. It remembers what the bad stuff was and somehow magically does the opposite and makes you well.

I propose homoeopathic cures are paid for with homoeopathic solutions of money. Take money, show it to water, dilute til no more money left. Could even be delivered via bladder.

It’s touted as a cure for everything. I was going to list out what it is claimed, but like all good snake oil it fixes everything (and given it is water: also cleans your dishes!).

If homoeopathy worked: drinking water would simultaneously kill and heal you for any number of ailments. A swim would mean no one ever died from skin cancer cos I’m sure somewhere in the ocean some time ago there was cancerous material diluted away.

What is the 10:23 campaign then?

For those not in the know, the 10:23 (or ten to the power of 23) is a campaign against the afore mentioned quack remedies on shelves next to real medicine.

10:23 Campaign.

The 10:23 (or 10²³) refers to the time of day the campaign was to take place and a nod to Avogadro’s constant (a chemistry figure that you learn about in highschool chemistry and then forget sometime between now and then.. but basically dealing with concentrations/atoms etc).

Letter to Boots about the above

Boots is a chemist/pharmacy chain in the UK. It (like other chemists) seems to be pushing homoeopathy as a viable treatment for a range of ills. My letter to boots about homoeopathic “remedies” in response to the underwhelming death-rate (e.g. zero) of the 10:23 campaign.

To Boots customer support,

It has been well established that homoeopathy has no active ingredient, described by various medical groups as “quack treatment” or “snake-oil” and consistently fails to differentiate itself from placebo in any scientific tests performed. Additionally people may take these treatments instead of actual medicine/vaccines which means treatable conditions end up going untreated. Of particular worry is the notion that people can cure anything from headache to cancer or replace vaccinations with this snake-oil “treatment”.

So in light of that: why is Boots stocking such ridiculous products?

If they are to be sold they should be labelled as sugar pills (and sold in the same location) as the sweets and chocolate bars.

Please could you also explain or comment on:

• What medical benefit you think this provides beyond placebo?
• Will you be pulling them off the shelves after the rather convincing 10:23 homoeopathy “overdose” which resulted in no noticeable impact on hundreds of people worldwide?

and

• Will you clearly label these products as having no medical affect whatsoever other than as a placebo so that customers are not lulled into believing they are purchasing a real medical treatment?

Regards,
Nathan Lee

Take that with some magic memory water Boots..

Will post up the reply (if I get one).
Does it really matter?

If you’re thinking “what’s the harm” perhaps check out some of the examples given by Simon Singh in “What’s the harm” including:

• Homoeopathy practitioners advising parents against vaccines (many diseases are returning thanks to this and other vaccine crackpot theories about vaccines)
• Might replace conventional (i.e. “useful”/”real”) treatment e.g. malaria prevention

In addition millions of dollars are spent on these sugar pills and overpriced water.

People can, have and will continue to die from these things because they are fed a load of rubbish instead of real medical advice.

There is, I think, a moral duty (that Boots and other chemists would do well to consider) to inform people of what is real (backed by real results) medicine vs some made up shit.

That’s why it matters.

The struggles post disaster although heightened dramatically are but a big bang version of the daily problems faced ongoing in developed nations. Extreme disease, poverty, health issues, hunger, thirst and helplessness are a constant when you’re in that half of the world that live on less than $2 a day.

Water

The most urgent need after any widespread disaster would have to be availability of clean water. The massive infrastructure damage that follows earthquakes is no exception: pipes and dams rupture, sewage leaks, electricity is knocked out to pumping stations, transport routes disrupted etc. For tsunamis the contamination of drinking water is a major problem. War and plague situations the problem becomes competition for limited fresh water or crowding near water which results in disease outbreak. Michael Pritchard’s got a device to turn undrinkeable water drinkable:

As a side note to get an idea of the scale he’s talking with the filtration of virii see my earlier post: Zoom in! Enhance.. Enhance! Oh, look! There’s a carbon atom.

So the idea is instead of shipping the rather heavy, bulky and “single shot” bottles of water: ship these filtration packs. They can then turn thousands of litres into drinkable water and most importantly they can do it away from central distribution centres (which means less risk of people in close contact spreading disease and less need to make risky treks or relocation to camps). If it can make the Thames water + rabbit shit + pond sludge drinkable then it can be used by people to get drinking water from the flood waters or stagnant dams.

Health

Life threatening injuries require urgent medical assistance, which often involves delivering things like vaccinations, antibiotics and other medications. These are sometimes delivered by doctors, other times by semi-skilled healthcare volunteers and sometimes by completely untrained people.

Marc Koska looked at what happens in poorer nations with reuse of syringes in poorer nations and proposed a solution that doesn’t cost any more than the standard syringe out there in circulation today:

So to prevent a natural disaster (or simply being a poor nation) turning into a subsequent AIDS/HIV, Hepatitis or other blood borne outbreak after the dust has settled: any and all syringes sent into a disaster zone need to have this “fire once and break” mechanism.

Aside from the immediate/urgent injuries of the masses affected by the disaster there’s also the medium to longer term concerns. Many are instantly thrown below the poverty level as their possessions may have been lost, destroyed or left behind. Sight is perhaps one of the most important sensory tools we have as humans and Josh Silver has an amazing demonstration of cheap, easily adjustable liquid filled eye glasses which could restore clear vision to people. This is in addition to the worth of such a device in any developing nation as a means for increasing productivity and removing poor vision as a barrier to economic independence for many aging people.

Bill Clinton (an idol of mine for public speaking) talks about the core problem with many developing/poor nations: the need for healthcare systems.

He makes the interesting point that one of the biggest problems in nations without systems is that in an environment of chaos you have no guarantee that effort will result in certain outcomes. Everything becomes a struggle, absolutely everything. Take a developed nation: you know that making the effort to go to a doctor with a child for vaccination will almost always result in you walking away with a vaccinated child (or an appointment the next day if for some reason they couldn’t see you that day).

Bill’s talk is about creating a repeatable model for installing self maintaining healthcare systems in countries that will address the issue of incapacity in those nations which is starting to become the biggest hurdle to tackling various health problems.

Money
A huge need for any disaster recovery is via emergency relief funds flowing in quickly and to the right people. This is what I’d probably call top down aid. But taking a step either side of the disaster event (lead up or later stage recovery) and you have a need for funding at the bottom level in the developing world.

The individual need for economic growth beyond organic funding (e.g. you need a piece of equipment that you simply do not have the cash for but which will allow you to generate income). What will work is not charity necessarily as the old “give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” states.

Jacqueline Novogratz proposes an alternative to straight out charity she calls “patient capital”:

So rebuilding and pre-building (preparing a nation to be strong and ready to cope with disasters) this is of great importance. Low income entrepreneurs need access to finance too. There are now a number of micro-finance or micro lending options out there.

Now I’ll stretch the mandate of this blog entry (I am the boss of it after all) a bit and attempt to link into post economic credit crisis (see here for my background on the credit crisis in pretty pictures and animations) consumer spending habits and how it could be a good thing for having money available for such disasters. Watch John Gerzema talk about value shifts in consumerism:

So the idea he was discussing was that we’d move away from mindless consumption (I hope it sticks!). People becoming more humble in their purchasing or indeed less likely to purchase unnecessary goods in the first place.

Tourism is trending towards trips that are a bit more low key (which would perhaps make less “touristy” places more likely destinations, perhaps helping to get tourism going in developing nations).

Consumers could also start to put pressure on companies to make ethical choices and be less exploitative/more inclusive of the 3rd world (e.g. stuff like the Fair Trade Association).

I could go on for pages and pages with extrapolations from this basic concept with respect to the 3rd world, but perhaps I’ll leave that for another time.

Education
Education can’t be quickly dropped from helicopter and stuck in a kids arm via some healthcare worker. BUT I strongly believe that the key to solving just about any of our problems (and dramatically lesson the impact of natural disasters) is via education.

Health problems, inescapable poverty, religion based persecution/superstition etc. can all be pushed out of the spotlight by giving people access to education. Access to good, secular education (yes, I do happen to think that teaching kids that “god did it” instead of real science is a rather horrible thing to do) can and does help people’s lives get better. Unfortunately the very worst of bible thumping misinformation (Dying from AIDS is preferable to using a condom type stuff) is getting pushed in massive amounts into the poor nations where lack of funding leaves a massive gap.

But I digress!

With education comes the ability to read and write. This means health pamphlets, coordination with government/aid workers etc. It means independent research/learning can take place (see the end for a great example!).

So in the pre-disaster situation: with education comes the opportunity to better your position in life (economically, intellectually etc). Women are often (always?) the last in a given society to access this basic mechanism for improvement. With that in mind, Michelle Obama’s plea for education (filmed last year) directed at girls is definitely worth a listen:

Education is one of those ways of “disaster proofing” (well.. strives toward disaster proofing at least). It replaces ignorance with knowledge, superstition with reason and prevents a whole sway of flow on consequences throughout society if people are uneducated, poor and with no possibility of escaping such a situation.

Like any good teacher, the ones servicing the eager young minds in developing nations will need materials. So to address that, from a technology standpoint: Richard Baraniuk talks about a system for sharing/open sourcing learning:

I don’t need to go into how beneficial free, shareable knowledge can be in boosting the education levels in any given country. A number of universities have opened up their course materials to anyone with an internet connection. Of course this does tend to be a bit inaccessible where internet is not available or computers are scarce so I guess he talks about community authored, publish on demand inexpensive books which could be extended to poorer nations with little access to the internet. This links in with the programs to bring laptops and internet to the developing nations, so access to content in the first place is definitely an important part of multi-pronged approach to educating the poor.

Mapping

Back to an immediate need in any disaster operation: The need for maps in terms of directing basic humanitarian functions through to use of GPS devices for efficient transport is critical.

There are programmes out there like Tracks 4 Africa who take the approach of handing out GPS mapping units to a community of volunteers and create an average of some fairly volatile paths.

Another community/volunteer approach is described in the “Making maps to fight disaster, build economies” by Lalitesh Katragadda at TEDIndia last year:

Communication

“Data is king” an old buddy of mine Rob once said and making sense of the massive amount of data that is produced during these disasters is far beyond anyone’s ability to sift through it all. So Erik Hersman’s TED Talk on reporting crisis via texting proposes a solution:

It’s a bit of a longer term goal, but a universal means of communication is important in any disaster situation. While I won’t claim that English is the panacea of communication the point is made by Jay Walker on the world’s English mania. It certainly seems like English is in many places in the world the possible “go between” language to unite many different nationalities.

In terms of lifting up the developed world the vast quantity and quality of materials available in English is undeniable, so ability to understand that is great.

Information Visualisation

Hans Rosling shows the best stats about the developing world you’ve ever seen (maybe you have seen it before in my previous post), particularly important to make the right policy decisions and to separate out the myth from that supportable by the data:

Having the right data analysis and visualisation tools is important for managing both the recovery from a disaster (the obvious problem being the collection of data to begin with. The wild variations over initial days of crisis of “estimated deaths” is but one example) and the prevention of the next event via generally improving the country’s situation to begin with.

Optimism for the future

I’ll end this rather lengthy post with some talks (or “grim inspiration” for the first one) on Optimism.

The first (a bit of a long one) by Robert “I’m not Mr optimism” Write is assuring us that history has an overall direction despite the apparent downs. From single cell organisms to today there is hope found in our evolution(s):

And I think a great example of how someone with nothing but a bit of ingenuity and some scraps of materials can do something quite impressive:

and his return to TED two years later a much more confident speaker (even throwing in some jokes..).

Which reinforces my earlier section on education and access to knowledge. William had access to a fairly hard won education. In his readings he came across one book that talked about the principles of wind electricity generation. This gave him the inspiration to dig up some pipes, an old bicycle dynamo and some other bits to make a windmill to power lights, radios and later irrigation pumps and the neighbours’ mobile phones.

If there’s a thing that people need particularly in a disaster situation or at the bottom of the economic rung: it’s optimism.

As William said in his speech: “Trust yourself and believe. Whatever happens don’t give up.”

Donations

All the best wishes for those doing good in Haiti and helping rebuild a destroyed country.

In terms of providing no bullshit assistance (without trying to convert people/spend it on bibles) I’d recommend Oxfam and the Red Cross, two great organisations that have helped millions over the years:

• Oxfam Australia’s Haiti donation page (or the US one for the yanks and UK one for the poms)
• Australian Red cross Haiti Quake appeal (or the US one, UK one)

In terms of some of the longer term goals I talked about, I think the tireless work of people like Fred Hollows is invaluable (restoring sight to people in the poorer nations). See The Fred hollows foundation to donate there. Again, another “let’s get maximum bang for buck” type organisation.

FOOTNOTE: As a (kinda) disclaimer I donate to the above charities as per any “ordinary bloke” off the street might, but have no financial/business or any other ties whatsoever. This blog is not funded by anyone other than myself.

Where is the real miracle here? How about showing us one amputee who has been healed? Surely not too big an ask for any god worth his/her salt? Prayer is a placebo, nothing more. Mary MacKillop herself was proof of the idea that two working hands achieve more than a million hands praying. So let’s not belittle the good she did by ridiculous superstition and the Catholic Church trying to boost falling numbers. If prayer worked there would be no need for people like MacKillop to try to fix things.

Nathan Lee Coogee

Prayer has been shown to be beneficial to the individual praying in the same sense that any other placebo can be useful: positive thinking. That’s not the same as a miracle. You can (and many people do) get the same result without the need for supernatural appeals.

How to think you're helping at the expense of actually helping!

The point I made was that Mary Mackillop (for all her sky god beliefs) did good by going out there and doing stuff. She didn’t sit around and pray to try and fix the world. I’ve absolutely no beef with anyone who is out there trying to help people. Whether wasting time trying to convert them or push an irrational belief system on vulnerable people is morally “good” is another matter (or indeed you’re pushing that ideology and don’t buy it yourself e.g. like that fraud Mother Teresa..).

Our bodies have a remarkable capacity for repair and capacity to function: that’s not a miracle either. It’s amazing biology and shows how fantastically sophisticated our bodies have become after millions of years of evolutionary fine tuning in a harsh environment.

Mary wrote on occasion too, only fair I should write about her.

Here’s how the miracle of Mary Mackillop “cured” cancer:

Kathleen Evans, 66, whose anonymity has been zealously guarded until now, spoke at the Mary MacKillop chapel in North Sydney this afternoon about her incredible survival.

Surrounded by her husband Barry, family members and sisters from the Josephite Order, the mother of five, grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of two, told how she had smoked since the age of 16 but had given up in 1990, three years before she got the devastating news that at 49 she had cancer.

The tumour, in her right lung, was particularly aggressive and quickly spread to her glands. Within a few months a secondary cancer was found on her brain.

She was told it was inoperable and that chemotherapy and X-ray treatment were considered pointless.

“Besides,” she said, “the odds were just not worth it.

“‘I was only given a couple of months at the most to live so I said thanks but no thanks.

“All I had left was prayer.”

A friend in the Hunter Valley gave her a picture of Mary MacKillop and a piece of her clothing, so Ms Evans, her family and her parish all began praying.

Yep, that’s the “miracle” there. This half baked explanation of how worshipping a piece of cloth (that Mary Mackillop may or may not have wiped her nose with or worn at some stage which she is so attached to that she pays attention) cures cancer.

Just how many other people at some stage have been told their situation was dire and they had better get their affairs in order? How many have subsequently recovered? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

The data so far..

The world is full of people who were told they would die by a certain age and found a way to beat the odds to keep alive and kicking.

What’s the real story?

What we have here is a lady who smoked from the age of 16, gave it up, they found (a gift from God?) cancer and her body was (fortunately) able to clear it up once it recovered from the years of smoking abuse.

Just like someone who’s diagnosed with heart problems or high blood pressure who gives up the burgers, starts going for regular walks/swims and eats healthily has a pretty good chance their body will get back to a good state.

Had we had two identical twins who had identical smoking habits, who were diagnosed with the identical cancers in the same spots in the body at the same stage and one prayed to the grubby bit of Mackillop cloth and the other didn’t THEN maybe we’d start to have something interesting to investigate. Even then though, all it would really be testing would be the power of positive thinking/placebo affect. That’s why I asked for an amputee cure as proof of a miracle (it won’t be long and science/medicine will fix that too.. and then I’ll bet praise goes skyward for that too).

If doctors were surprised, it was because based on probability she had a good chance of being dead in a matter of months (and who could blame them looking at her medical history). That’s assuming of course we can believe that her description of the medical opinion is correct and that she wasn’t receiving any other treatment (the old chemotherapy/intensive care/skilled doctors/multiple operations and therapies that God gets the credit for and doctors get screwed).

Time for some investigative journalism!

Now to tell the Sydney Morning Herald what I they need to do next time to fix their fluff religious “miracle” piece wrapped up as “news”:

• find the doctors involved and talk to them
• find out if there are many similar recoveries recorded
• perhaps include some more grounded, less superstitious reasons for the recovery or talk to someone with a medical/science background about how the body repairs itself

Anyhow, rant over.. Til next time dear readers..

The anti-vaccination mob are a dedicated lot.

Warning, tin foil hats are necessary while reading anti-vaccination material on the web

They’ll spend hours copy-pasting the same unreferenced rubbish, citing “concerned mother instinct” (helped by celebrity twits like Oprah) and claiming endlessly against all evidence that vaccines are linked with autism (the original source of this autism/vaccine link stuff was a complete fraud).

All medical researchers are evil mass kiddy murderers and vaccines are full of evil ingredients that turn you into a zombie or something. They’ll then claim complete faith in stuff like homoeopathy and magnet therapy etc. Fantastic stuff, really..

But just take a read of this piece of conspiracy garbage that alleges everyone from Obama through the UN, WHO and EU to testing labs and medical companies are part of some global “Illuminati” (is that Ill-uminati) biochemical plot to mass murder half the globe. Oh and the banking system, homeland security, FEMA, the CIA and even the Freemasons (must be spread by special handshakes eh?) are in on it too.

But the plot really goes from crazy to completely and utterly bat shit nuts at about this point:

They have installed a covert infrastructure of genocide in the USA, including FEMA camps with incinerators and mass graves.
They have trained police and other security and health organisations such as Homeland Security and FEMA to carry out the programme of genocide, and to target American patiots calling for a return to the Constitution as terrorists.

It most certainly is!

I guess this is not too much more than the average anti-vaccine stance that alleges vaccines are all about harming kids rather than preventing disease. I pity the poor doctors who have to put up with stupid parents arguing against giving their kids a way to avoid some childhood disease.

I just reckon it’s simpler (and more grounded in reality) to believe that vaccines are there to help prevent some nasty diseases that we’ve found a way to beat through the hard work of smart people. The billions of people that have had vaccines and subsequent healthy lives also lends weight to that theory.

Or maybe I’m just another of the Ill-uminati spreading the evil lies and plots to kill small children via MMR and fluvax injections..

Mwhahahahahaha..

Neumann’s daughter Madeline died from untreated diabetes on March 23, 2008, surrounded by people praying for her. When she stopped breathing, her parents’ business and Bible study partners finally called 911.

Prosecutors contend a reasonable parent would have known something was gravely wrong with Madeline and that her mother recklessly killed her by ignoring obvious symptoms, such as her inability to walk or talk.

Praying simply does not work and it’s particularly stupid to pray for things which you yourself can fix. In this case prayer was not necessary because no miracle was required just standard treatment of a diabetic child. Modern medicine shits all over this particular problem thanks to insulin. Prayer and wishful religious inspired thinking however do nothing.

Praying for a cure list of steps. Just jump to the last one right away

It’s such a shame that a child ended up dead because of their parents’ superstitious belief that appeals to made up beings could work better than a trip to a doctor. The only trouble is that tolerance of this archaic practice of prayer is pretty widespread.

During closing arguments, Falstad described Neumann as a religious zealot who let her daughter, called Kara by her parents, die as a test of faith.

I wonder though if the witnesses in the trial were ordered to place their hand on a bible before giving testimony?

So is it really any wonder that a Christian might be prepared to sacrifice their child as a test of faith? Isn’t the whole idea of Christianity about a father sacrificing a son. One of the appalling parts of the bible I remember vividly from my (albeit limited) exposure to the bible thumpers for some reason let into school was the story of Abraham and Isaac:

“Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-18)

A decent, moral parent would tell God where he could stick his idea and ask what kind of fucked up thing that is to be saying. Up there with “love thine enemy” and “turn the other cheek” type lessons in stupidity.

This woman probably blames herself not because she didn’t go to the hospital with its evil science and real medicine. No, she probably blames herself because she didn’t have enough faith. With more faith her prayers would surely have been answered. Or maybe she just thinks this is God’s will and she should be thankful for the chance to go to jail for 20-25 years to learn some divine lesson or fulfil some punishment.

I mean I really hope she has come to her senses and blames herself for believing that prayer was going to work. But sadly blaming lack of faith is how the logic of these religions work to strengthen their stranglehold. Hell, even the two faced Mother Theresa knew praying was bullshit and didn’t really believe it all.

It seems like never occurs that God must have been responsible for the bad thing the first place, or perhaps (if you have to have god in the picture) blessing you with close proximity to a fully stocked, clean, modern hospital.

Let’s hope this is the trigger for the people involved to realise that they need to stop just accepting “god speaks to me”, “I believe in the power of prayer”, “God will answer our prayers” and maybe religion will die out a bit quicker.

The Attorney said this in her closing statement:

“Basic medical care would have saved Kara’s life — fluids and insulin,” Falstad said. “There was plenty of time to save Kara’s life.”

It was an arrogant exercise in self delusion that meant that the real help (which they all knew was just a 911 emergency call away) was requested. It was the adults involved gambling a child’s life on the unlikely event that she might recover by herself (from a state of not being able to walk or talk) so that they could happy-clap each other and praise the lord. So for that reason alone they all need to go to jail.

I love how it appears that people involved still think the parent is praiseworthy.

He said Neumann was a devout Christian and took good care of her four children.

Aah, what part of killing a child makes her a good parent? I’m no parent, but I’m pretty sure that’s a “you have failed parenting” situation. My parents never killed me as a child and I turned out ok.

From an Earthly and morally good (e.g. not Isaac’s old man) standpoint – parents should look after their kids by taking them to a doctor when they’re sick or injured. If this was “mother high on crack lets baby die of neglect” these religious types would be treating this entirely differently. Both are a tragedy for the poor kid, both are situations where someone’s mind is not working quite right. One gets special government subsidies (tax free status) to promote and pollute people’s minds with rubbish, the other is illegal under anti-drug laws.

I’d suggest that the prayer group who sat by with the parents should also be charged for contributing and not calling a doctor when it was pretty obvious that the kid wasn’t getting better. But maybe they thought an exorcism could fix it right at the end.

By the way, if you’re reading this in Ireland: it may be illegal to do so thanks to rediculous “blasphemous libel” laws proposed by the Irish PM.

After all, my saying prayer is stupid, useless and dangerous is insulting to a whole bunch of religions.. *shrug*

Anyhow, let’s hope we see less prayer and more action and maybe people won’t end up unecessarily dying while good people stand by looking skyward when they should just get in and do something.