God vs. Medicine

[peacetraveler22]

I'm not a believer, but have been surrounded by religion my entire life. As a young child, I was christened Catholic and routinely attended mass. The whole ritual intrigued me. Listen to the man in the robe sing, stand in line, put a wafer in my mouth during communion, and then kneel on a hard bench and pray to some mysterious figure called "God." I never felt any connection to the process, or any solace from prayer. At age 10, my parents sent me to a conservative Baptist school and I remained there until graduation. I don't have much to say about the experience except that it completely turned me away from religion. To this day, many of my friends are deeply religious and I respect their faith. But what happens when religious beliefs become so extreme that they endanger the life of a child? This saga currently is playing out in America.

The child at the center of the controversy resides in an Amish community in Ohio. I've previously written about the Amish, and this sect holds a special place in my heart. You can read my views on them here, in a post that was written before most of you subscribed to my blog. Many Amish completely refuse medical treatment based on religious grounds, but in this case the young girl received chemotherapy for a short period of time to treat an aggressive form of leukemia. After seeing the side effects, the parents refused further treatment and the hospital petitioned the Courts to intervene. In their view, they are morally and legally obligated to ensure the child receives proper medical care. Without it, she faces almost no chance of survival. Yet parents have a fundamental right to raise kids as they see fit. Courts in America rarely intervene with parenting decisions unless there is clear evidence the parents are unfit to make decisions. This usually arises when parents are drug addicts, alcoholics or mentally impaired. The judge in this case issued a temporary order a few weeks ago authorizing the hospital to continue treatment until the matter is officially resolved in the Courts.

There have been instances where children have died as a result of fundamentalist Christian parents who refused any forms of medicine or treatment, instead trusting the outcome to God and faith. In most cases, the parents are criminally charged with murder or involuntary manslaughter after the child's death. You can read about one example in this article. Of course the issue also arises with terminally ill adults who wish to die gracefully rather than suffer a painful and slow death. I'm sure everyone has heard of Jack Kevorkian, "Dr. Death," who assisted hundreds of patients with medically induced suicides. His famous quote is "dying is not a crime." It was later determined that some of his patients were not terminally ill or even suffering from extreme pain. He was convicted of murder and served only eight years. However, as a result of his actions, American Courts were forced to take up the issue of voluntary death. Physician assisted suicide is now legal in four States (Vermont, Washington, Oregon and Montana). The legal principles in each State differ. For example, in Montana the physician may only assist with the suicide if a Court issues an order after evaluating all facts in the case. Other States require a waiting period of 10 - 18 days to ensure the patient is not making a harsh or sporadic decision.

I've watched two relatives die very slow and painful deaths - one from cancer and one from liver disease. Both bound to their homes and beds in later stages of the illness, with hospice nurses visiting them two to three times a day to try to make the pain bearable. All light in their eyes completely gone with the realization that death was knocking on their door. Immense sadness when they passed, but also relief and comfort to know they were no longer suffering.

Insomnia has recently hit hard and I lay awake at night thinking about this. Should children be forced to die because they have extremist parents? At what point should the government and/or Courts intervene? Should all States permit physician assisted suicide? In these situations, we walk a very delicate line between morality, ethics and religion. Between science and faith.

Thoughts?

And to all my Jewish readers, Happy New Year! :)

Comments

[qi-tronic.livejournal.com]

And top members of the white ribbon opposition (but Navalny is not) and 1st wave oligarchs (ex: Khodorkovsky).

Or course here it is very easy to get "antisemitism" label, but it is just one of those questions where we should just look at the data without prejudice.

Is it something strange in this picture when we have (mostly) oppositional Jews in media in Moscow and (again, mostly) pro-Putin Russians in provinces?
Should we start some sort of "positive discrimination" program to get more Russians from provinces to the central media and cultural life? Just for the sake of the country's integrity?
Scandal :))

A bit of history:

I do not know how American elite is constructed but in Russia since Peter the Great we had a divided society.
In tsarist times there was globalized elite, speaking French, having high German percentage.
But 90% of the country were uneducated peasants.
It was like 2 nations - smaller nation and bigger nation in one country.
Jews in those times were highly discriminated and could not live in most parts of the country.

So, for obvious reasons, Jews took very active part in the Revolution,
Most members of Lenin's bolshevik cabinet were Jews, for example.
So Jews were emansipated and, traditionally being highly educated (everyone at least could read sacred books), took very active role in the country's life, substituting the old aristocratic elite.

Stalin, though, was not Jew, he prosecuted many of old revolutioners and, after all, started openly anti-semitic politics in the end of his reign, pushing young Russians to all positions.
But he died soon and Jews basically kept their positions in the educated class.

So these are roots of the situation you see here on LJ.
Very high persentage of Jews in the educated elite leads to their natural prevalence in the intellectual blogging platform.
And being more globalized rather than rooted in the Russian imperial culture most of them are anti-Putin.

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

I'm surrounded by Jews in the legal profession. :) Thanks for detailed history lesson, always interesting! And do you really consider LJ an "intellectual blogging platform?" There is so much trash on here.

[qi-tronic.livejournal.com]

"
And do you really consider LJ an "intellectual blogging platform?"
"

Still yes, compared to others.
LJ was the first, and standalone blogs are not so common here.
VK and Facebook are not well suited for long texts, I think,
Instagram and Twitter too :))

Yes, you see much trash here but if you look at the top there are no cat pictures or "here's my ordinary life interesting only to friends" journals but some hot topics or dicussions.

Just compare to this :))
www. liveinternet. ru/top/

That's "simple people" blogging platform...

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

VK and Facebook aren't blogging platforms, so I don't put them in the same category. LJ is a wonderful and unique community because everyone is gathered in one place. This makes communication and ongoing dialogue with readers easy. On stand alone blogs there are virtually no comments, even on popular ones. I really wish there was an American equivalent, or that LJ would be more open to work with English language writers.

"Simple person" blogging platform - this looks amusing! :)