CelticBear’s Musings

Faith in “alternative medicine” is going to kill a child in Oregon:
Family puts faith in alternative hope
I learned about this from the latest Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast.
In short (read the article yourself, please,) a couple with a daughter who had a brain tumor and seeking all possible medical solutions and went to a faith healer. After extensive medical treatment, after seeing the faith healer the tumor went away. In standard post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy, they believed what came before must have caused what followed and so the psychic must have cured the cancer and not the medical treatments.

Well, years later the tumor came back. Over the phone the psychic “sensed” that the “tumor” was actually new brain tissue growing, and his original psychic treatment was still a success. (By the way, it’s impossible to grow new brain tissue.) And on his recommendation, they’re not going to seek medical treatment!

As the main host of the podcast (who’s a neurosurgeon) said, it’s one thing for someone to seek all possible medical solutions and someone who will wave their hands over someone. But to refuse possibly life-saving medical treatment over woo-woo, is negligent! And as a parent, and a doctor who has seen this kind of thing, he empathizes with the parents. He understands that a parent who is seeing their child in such a terrible condition, would cling to anything that appears to be able to save her life. The parents are also victims in this, and the true villain is the psychic who is advising a poor duped couple to basically let their daughter die.

But also culpable is the state legislature! By passing and enforcing such laws that allow parents to use religions or faith as a reason to refuse medical treatments, is allowing parents to potentially kill their kids because of ignorance! And the sad thing is when this poor child dies, the parents will likely blame the doctors and say what they did interfered with what the psychic tried to do for them. They will blame the doctors and not the crook, nor themselves for making a horrendously terrible decision. Not that I would wish them to be in that situation! No parent should. I’d rather than her tumor magically disappear than to have it kill her in order to prove the charlatan wrong and the parents as credulous dupes.

But this is our culture, this is our legal system. It’s heartbreaking.