Pa. couple who only prayed for dying tot convicted

[ZombieHorde]

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A fundamentalist Christian couple who relied on prayer, not medicine, to cure their dying toddler son was convicted Friday of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment.

Herbert and Catherine Schaible of Philadelphia face more than a decade in prison for the January 2009 pneumonia death of 2-year-old Kent.

-snip-

Experts say about a dozen U.S. children die in faith-healing cases each year. An Oregon couple were sentenced this year to 16 months in prison for negligent homicide in the death of their teenage son, who had an undiagnosed urinary blockage.

-snip-

"The legal community is trying to force our church group to put them in the hands of this flawed medical system, when they have chosen to put them in the hands of a perfect God, who does not make mistakes," Clark said Friday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzJhH...

[Angry Dragon]

1. Hey clark, you are an idiot

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Doremus]

3. Undiagnosed urinary blockage.

My god, how long does it take to die from that? I can't even imagine the pain.

I hope those parents experience even 1/10th of the agony their son endured at their behest.

[Curmudgeoness]

4. Although I do not like to step on religious toes,

these people are morons. And I don't really care whether they suffer and die themselves if they think that is best, I cannot agree with forcing it on their children. And that appears to be the crux of the conviction. These parents are saying that the devil won this battle. My bet is that the parents were just not worthy, didn't pray hard enough, did not believe quite enough---so it is their fault.

But then again, I guess it was just time that this child was called back to god.

[bowens43]

6. if any toes needing stepping on

it's the toes of the people who believe that there is an omnipotent little old men sitting up the clouds smiting some and blessing others.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. I tend to agree with you, but also feel that if you do not harm

with any of your beliefs, there is no reason for me to ridicule you. But in this case, harm is done. What a bastardization of religious beliefs!

[cleanhippie]

38. Depends on what your definitin of "harm" is.

I think it harms children to indoctrinate and brainwash them with their parents religious beliefs, instead of letting their minds develop into the little critical thought machines they are designed (no intelligent designer implied) to be.

[bowens43]

5. these idiots should spend the rest of their lives in jail.

More evidence that religion makes you stupid.

[Odin2005]

7. Fundamentalist religion is Child Abuse.

[skepticscott]

8. Yes, but "fundamentalist" atheists

are no different. Right???? This sort of thing happens among militant atheist sects all the time, right??

[humblebum]

10. Oh No! Nothing like this would ever happen among atheists. Yeh right.

Any time one group drums up hatred for another group, people are probably going to get hurt. History shows that atheists are far from being immune to stupidity.

[provis99]

12. no, it would not happen with atheists. They do not believe in god.

they would not pray to god to cure their sick children.

[humblebum]

15. Did I even say that it would happen with atheists? That's

rather ridiculous, don't you think? I just said that atheists are just as capable of monster stupidity as is anyone else.

[laconicsax]

13. Would you like to suggest a situation where an atheist parent would...

prefer to pray to a god rather than take their sick child to the doctor?

[immoderate]

14. They knock off a dozen kids a year. Atheists... how many?

Check for false equivalence, it can happen.

--imm

[Igel]

25. Don't know, actually.

"False equivalence" is sometimes a scare word. Having labelled something as "false equivalence," your audience perceives that word "false" and assumes, therefore, that atheists don't have their own quirks.

The real equivalence isn't between religion and atheism but between different forms of adherence to ineffective "cures." Distilled water a la homeopathy, praying a la fundamentlism, shoving bonebreak or black cohosh into a kid a la naturopathy.

I've seen both fundies and atheists go along torturing their kids before rushing them to the ER. The kids survived, but the prayer or distilled water didn't do a heck of a whole lot to ensure their survival.

One difference is that while most preachers, naturopaths and homeopathists usually tell the parents to rush to the evil allopathy folk, a vanishingly small number of preachers can still say, "It's god's will" and encourage parents to keep their sick ones home.

Still, a lot of the parents that do this kind of thing for religious reasons aren't encouraged to do it by their ministers. With there being more fundies than homeopathists and die-hard naturopathy folk you don't expect numerical equivalency. But I wonder if there aren't cases of negligent homicide which, because they're not sensationist but involve herbs or distilled water qua drug, don't rate national news. (Of course, I have this assumption that there's not a fundamental weirdness about Xian fundies that isn't shared by other "fundamentalist" outlooks.)

[immoderate]

32. Atheism doesn't endorse medicinal philosophies. Religion does.

In some states, there is a religious exemption from appropriate regulations. Not only applies to faith healing, but leads to many deaths in church-run daycare and schools.

Atheist woo doesn't get these protections. An atheist who treats his kid with crystals should burn (figuratively.) Atheism does not ward off the stupid. I would hope that anyone who can do the math knows homeopathy is a scam. Herbs (and food) are another matter. They are real chemicals and can have effects, though some are imaginary, your results may vary.

False equivalence is sometimes not a scare word.

Edit to add: Atheist ONLY means no belief in god. That, in itself, does not signify, or even require, intelligence.

--imm

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[humblebum]

18. I would say that you are going to be waiting for a long time because

nowhere did I intimate that such a specific thing had ever happened. However, history is loaded with atheists doing horrific things.

[skepticscott]

19. So in other words

your original response was just irrelevant BS and had nothing to do with my post. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[skepticscott]

21. If I couldn't handle

criticism of atheism, I wouldn't be responding to it, now would I? That's how a rational person "handles" criticism...they respond with facts and arguments.

And please, quote exactly where in my post I broad-brushed "all of religion". My original post questioned when or where anything like this {i]specific incident had happened among "militant", "fundamentalist" atheists, in response to the persistent claims on this board that such people exist and are every bit as bad as fundy Xstians. Well...show us where "fundamentalist" atheists have let their children die rather than seek medical attention, as a direct result of their atheistic worldview.

If you can't, then please stop wearying our ears and wasting bandwidth with your blathering.

[humblebum]

34. Obviously you can't handle the criticism if you found something

in the post that caused it to be deleted.

[cleanhippie]

43. Obviously you cannot substantiate your rediculous claims.

As usual, you trot out your tired, old, debunked, broken record argument, yet when challenged to provide any evidence that it your argument applies in any way to the topic at hand, you fail to do so. Fail. Epic fail.

[skepticscott]

56. Self delete

[darkstar3]

46. Or maybe

there was an objectionable rule violation in your post and the mods decided to delete it. You and many others would do well to realize that when a post is deleted it is often NOT due to any action on the part of the person you insulted.

[skepticscott]

58. You're assuming

that I alerted on your post. Sorry to disappoint you and sorry that your assumption is bullshit, but I did no such thing. If someone else did, that's their business, but to me, your posts don't merit that kind of action.

[cleanhippie]

40. Ugh. At it again, I see.

[qb]

11. Just as bad are politicians who prevent passage of meaningful child protection laws.

In 1994, rather than criminalizing religious child abuse & neglect, Minnesota passed a useless law which requires parents or guardians to report themselves if they have withheld medical attention from their children. http://www.atheistsforhumanrights.org/child.htm

I recall State Senator John Marty defending the move in the name of religious freedom.

Minnesota still has an exemption on the books that says prayer is a viable alternative to medical care. Insurance even pays for prayer services.

[dmallind]

16. religion never hurt anyone and nobody does anything bad because of religion

Obviously these people would have eschewed medical care for their kid even if they weren't believers.

Oh and they are not True Christians!

[struggle4progress]

22. What a sad story. Fortunately, almost nobody does this: there are about 60 million

Americans aged 14 or below, and about a dozen cases of parents who neglect them in this particular manner

Other forms of fatal abuse/neglect of children are much more common: cases like this comprise a tiny fraction of the 1800 or so annual fatalities

[trotsky]

23. My Koresh, I'd laugh if it wasn't so sadly predictable...

to see you rush in to minimize, dismiss, or otherwise pooh-pooh any malfeasance by religious whackjobs. I'm sure they appreciate you supporting the cause. I mean, after all, these incidents are such a "tiny fraction" of child abuse fatalities.

[struggle4progress]

24. If you know a way to reduce the occurrence, I'm sure everyone would be interested to hear it

About 2600 kids die annually in motor vehicle accidents, before reaching the age at which they'd be allowed to drive; about 450 die annually from gunshots

It's clear in a general way how to try to reduce motor vehicle or firearm mortality. We have general reporting requirements for childhood abuse/neglect; but trying to reach out in advance to the twelve families a year, who will lose a child through religiously-motivated medical neglect, seems to me a rather difficult problem

[skepticscott]

27. Please tell us

that you're not going to equate deaths that resulted from accidents to totally preventable deaths that resulted from deliberate and willful neglect, motivated by religious fuckwaddery.

[struggle4progress]

31. My post asked how to reduce the occurrence. There are all manner of entirely preventable deaths

that occur at low rates: despite ongoing public education campaigns to remind people not to leave children locked in cars during the summer and not to walk away momentarily from toddlers in bathtubs, children die regularly from it

If you have any ideas, let's hear them


Kids Dying at Record Pace in Hot, Locked Cars
Left Unsupervised Kids Play in Sweltering Cars, Become Trapped and Die
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
June 25, 2010
... Eighteen children have died across the country since the beginning of the year, eight of them in just the past 12 days, a record setting number of deaths for the first six months of the year since such data began being collected in 1998 ... http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/article/kids-dying-hot-una...

Here's toddler bathtub drowning this month

Toddler dead after drowning
December 07, 2010 8:30 PM
ODESSA AMERICAN
A 17-month-old toddler who was found facedown in a bathtub Monday afternoon was pronounced dead at about 2 a.m. Tuesday in a Lubbock Hospital ... http://www.oaoa.com/news/toddler-56879-release-lubbock....

[trotsky]

33. Ah but you see, we DO take steps to prevent accidental deaths.

We have product safety laws, recalls, and as you even mention - public education campaigns. As a result, those kinds of accidental deaths are most certainly much rarer than they would otherwise be.

Can you identify ANY steps we are taking to minimize deaths of children at the praying hands of their religiously insane parents? Do you feel we should just accept such deaths as the price we pay for religious freedom? I mean, after all, to you the numbers are insignificant.

[humblebum]

35. So now you are making the absurd assertion that religion causes child abuse?

I am to assume then that the entire jury was made up of atheists, because Christians would have found them innocent? The truth is that the jury was probably majority Christian and that they in no way sanctioned such behavior. And of course we know that atheists commit no child abuse.

[trotsky]

39. No, you appear to making that absurd assertion.

With another of your standard attack tools: the strawman.

[humblebum]

42. Asking for an honest answer is not a strawman. You really need to do

your homework. You're still using avoidance as your primary method of argumentation.

[trotsky]

47. Yes, I'm avoiding your strawman. I have no interest in addressing it.

Deal.

[cleanhippie]

54. He DID answer you. He said "No" then explained that it is YOU making that absurd assertion.

But you ignored it anyway, as usual.

[cleanhippie]

44. Not in the name of atheism they don't.

But you know that, and continue to ignore it.

[struggle4progress]

36. It's dishonest to say nobody does anything to prevent such incidents

There's significant social pressure against such approaches: in Pennsylvania (for example), religious belief is not a defense against a charge of medical neglect, as indicated by the case here

But the relatively few people, who hold the "prayer instead of medical treatment" view, tend to operate somewhat invisibly: the social networks involved appear to be small and rather closed. When the authorities intervened twenty years ago in a measles epidemic, they actually had trouble locating the First Century Gospel Church school because it was not listed in any directory. And it is frequently unclear exactly what views people actually hold: the attorneys in the present case claim the Schaibles would have sought medical care for Kent had they known how sick he was, which might be plausible since both parents have only a ninth-grade education -- and that from the First Century Gospel Church school where both have worked as teachers. An assistant DA told the judge in this case the child could have been saved by (say) Tylenol: that might be true -- but it is also possible that these parents simply wouldn't have enough education to administer such a medication safely, even if provided with directions from a competent physician, or to recognize problems arising from Tylenol misuse and to seek further medical advice in that event

So it's not immediately clear to me how further to reduce childhood mortality due to parents who prefer faith-healing to ordinary medical treatment. Again, if you have any ideas, let's hear them



... The churches, the Faith Tabernacle Congregation and the First Century Gospel Church, each run their own schools, which together have about 350 students who have never been inoculated against measles or other diseases ... The concerns of health officials took on new urgency on Thursday night when they learned of the death of a 5-year-old girl whose family belonged to the First Century Gospel Church in Northeast Philadelphia ... Health officials say they believe the school is unlicensed and has about 150 students. The officials said they had been unable to find the school, an unmarked beige brick building in a working class German and Irish neighborhood, until late Thursday night because it was not listed in any directory ...
Measles and Faith Combine In 5 Deaths in Philadelphia
By TAMAR LEWIN, Special to The New York Times
Published: February 16, 1991
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/16/us/measles-and-faith-...

... First Century Pastor Clark .. said .... The Schaibles .. are now being "persecuted" for not seeking help from a flawed and dangerous medical system. "The leading cause for death to this day - documented in a book called 'Death by Medicine' - is medical mistakes: 783,229 deaths per year" .... Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore told the judge at the .. October 2009 preliminary hearing that Kent .. could have been saved by antibiotics or Tylenol .... The Schaibles' attorneys maintain .... the Schaibles would have sought medical care for Kent had they known how sick he was ...
Posted on Tue, Dec. 7, 2010
First, do no harm: Prayer or medicine?
By MENSAH M. DEAN
Philadelphia Daily News
[e-mail] 215-854-5949
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20101207_First__d...

... Herbert Schaible, 42, teaches at a school affiliated with their church, First Century Gospel Church. His wife, 41, previously taught there, but now stays at home with the couple's children, from an infant to teenagers. The Schaibles grew up in the church and have never received medical care themselves, not counting the help of the 84-year-old lay midwife who attends home births, according to pastor Nelson A. Clark. Clark, 69, knew the couple as children and described them as honors students who dropped out of the church school in ninth grade, a year shy of the school's 10th grade graduation. Catherine Schaible did so at age 16 to begin teaching younger students, he said ...
Pa. couple who only prayed for dying tot convicted
(AP) – 2 days ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jzJhH...

... In North America, acetaminophen is sold in generic form or under a number of trade names: for instance "Tylenol" ... Acetaminophen has a narrow therapeutic index. This means that the common dose is close to the overdose, making it a relatively dangerous substance ...
Acetaminophen
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Acetaminophen

The FDA is looking into several hundred allegations of serious side effects, including seven deaths since May 1, involving over-the-counter children's mediation, including Children's Tylenol ...
Posted On: May 25, 2010 by Walton Law Firm
Tylenol Recalls Children's Tylenol After Disabilities and Death
http://www.legalpad.com/2010/05/tylenol_recalls_childre...

[trotsky]

41. I am glad you can ease your conscience...

by blithely dismissing the deaths of these children, trying to bury them under different statistics.

[struggle4progress]

45. Have a nice day

[skepticscott]

57. Your original post was intended

to dismiss the deaths resulting from this type of deliberate religious idiocy as unimportant and insignificant. If you're going to do that, you might at least start by comparing those numbers to deaths that you can verify result from the same type of idiocy, instead of simply using agglomerated numbers of deaths resulting from all sorts of causes, including those in which the people responsible for the welfare of the child bore no blame at all.

[struggle4progress]

59. My first post #22 pointed out that there are about 1800 child abuse/neglect cases annually,

of which the religiously-motivated medical-negligence deaths comprise less than 1%

Those 1800 cases do not seem to me to be cases "in which the people responsible for the welfare of the child bore no blame at all"

Most people adore their children and do not abuse/neglect them: a small fraction do fatally abuse/neglect; the annual death rate seems to be about 3 per 100000; the annual death rate for religiously-motivated medical neglect seems to be about 0.02 per 100000, which is rather below the death rate for children locked in hot cars in the summer (despite constant media efforts to educate parents of that hazard)

If you have useful ideas about how to further reduce (say) religiously-motivated medical neglect childhood mortality, I'm sure everyone would be interested

[darkstar3]

60. Minimization through statististics will not change the incredibly heinous nature of these acts.

Stop trying to stifle justified outrage. It's sickening.

[struggle4progress]

61. I see lots of noise without any ideas

[darkstar3]

62. And?

If that was the only point you wanted to make, you could have simply said that and moved on. Your statistical argument is simply disgusting apologetics.

As for ideas, I have many, but I don't believe such a defender of the faith would be interested in reading them.

[struggle4progress]

63. Have a nice day

[darkstar3]

64. False sincerity is unbecoming.

[trotsky]

30. A difficult problem only because of the highly privileged position...

that religion enjoys in society - with people like you defending even the blatantly harmful and extreme varieties and slapping the label "fundie atheist" on someone who voices an opinion in opposition to religion and its excesses.

[struggle4progress]

37. No, it's a difficult problem because the absolute numbers are small and because the families

involved tend to be rather isolated from the larger society

[trotsky]

48. And the society is highly phobic of criticizing religious beliefs.

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."
— Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation)

[struggle4progress]

49. Jury convicted in this case, as I read the OP. YMMV, of course. If you know of evidence

that people were aware that the Schaibles were not seeking medical treatment for a sick infant and yet refrained from expressing their opinions that medical treatment was necessary, do feel free to provide your evidence

[trotsky]

50. Yes of course, after the fact.

I'm telling you why these things keep happening. Religion enjoys a special, privileged, sheltered position in our society (MOST societies), and this kind of crap is the fallout.

[struggle4progress]

51. IIRC, juries typically convict "after the fact." I suspect there are some reasons for that.

If you have some favorite idea for "before the fact" convictions, please share

[trotsky]

53. I understand all you have left is trying to distort.

Have a great day!

[Name removed]

52. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[skepticscott]

26. A dozen that you know of

that are discovered and that get any publicity, in other words. The actual number, you have no clue about.

I'm sure that however many there were, they'd be happy to know, as they died unpleasantly, wondering why their parents weren't helping them, that kind folks like you regarded their lives as so insignificant.

[struggle4progress]

29. Fair enough criticism regarding the numbers, but it is the statistic cited by the link in the OP.

If you have a better estimate, I'd be happy to hear it

[MountainLaurel]

65. Here's a source you might try

http://whatstheharm.net/children.html

Not all, but most of these cases have to do with parents who don't treat their children for religious reasons.

[struggle4progress]

66. I'm not sure what the criteria are for inclusion on that webpage: it's a hodge-podge of cases

going back fifty years or more and covering more than one country:

... Rachel and her friends decided to go ghost hunting near a local haunted house. They didn't realize the owner of the house did not like visitors, and owned a gun. She ended up with a gunshot to the head ...

... Antonio's mother looked for an alternative to the painful chemotherapy treatments he needed for cancer. She found a clinic using a energy medicine machine. Antonio died anyway ...

... Jessica's mom suffered from severe depression. Her medical treatment for this was very successful and lauded in a local news article. But she decided to discontinue medication and treat herself with St. John's Wort ...

... He was being flown from Samoa to Hawaii for emergency heart surgery, but overzealous customs officials detained him and his caretakers for several hours. He died in a customs room at the airport ...

... She begged for food at school and was found rummaging through garbage for scraps. Her father and stepmother had denied her food and medical care ...

... Josh's parents were contacted by a police detective investigating allegations made through facilitated communication. There was no supporting physical evidence, but the family spent their life savings defending themselves ...

... She was traumatized by TV programs about the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, which talked about the end of the world. Her parents told her not to worry and diverted her attention to no avail. She drank a pesticide from her father's farm ...

... She met a couple who shared her belief in psychic powers and the supernatural. The man told her he could remove her bad demons by sleeping with her (which he did). When she tried to sever contact, he strangled her ...

... Although she is well aware of online scams, when she received an email titled "Job Offer" it seemed legit. The job was to cash checks. Now she's out $3,600 and embarrassed she fell for it ...

... When she received some disappointing grades at school, she committed suicide by jumping in front of a train ...

... This 12 year old is in the hospital with a degenerative bone condition ... Lack of vitamin D from her strict vegan diet from birth is believed to be the cause ...

[ZombieHorde]

28. LOL. Oh struggle4progress, what would we do without you?

I hope you have a good Christmas.

[DeSwiss]

55. Here we go again. And again. And again............

Madeline K. Neumann

- Ad infinitum.......

"It is possible for individuals and even for whole cultures to care about the wrong things. Which is to say that it is possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering. Just admitting this will transform our discourse about human morality.

It will always be easier to break things than to fix them. It seems to me therefore, to be patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than we can respect vast differences in the notion of how disease spreads. Or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes. We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life. And to do that we have to admit that these questions do have answers.

Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance ... by failing to live by the letter of the texts (religious holy books), while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally."

~Sam Harris