Orac has a post on the sad, horrifying story of Madeline Neuman, the 11-year-old girl who died (slowly and likely painfully) from a treatable form of diabetes as her parents looked on: instead of getting medical attention when she became ill, they simply prayed for her to get better:
According to reports, the last time Madeline saw a doctor was when she was 3-years-old.
When asked about their daughter’s death, they reportedly said, “We didn’t have enough faith.”
As Orac puts it:
If, as one commenter after the above quoted editorial stated, the Neumanns had said that they worshiped the Sun God Ra and expected that he would send his healing rays down to cure their daughter, no one would be defending them. No, they’d be rightly dismissed as members of a a dangerous cult. But make them members of a fundamentalist Christian sect saying in essence exactly the the same thing, and suddenly society bends over backwards to make excuses for their neglect and piously intones that we must show their beliefs “respect.”
Here’s to hoping some form of negligent homicide prosecution is in the works, as unlikely as it is in this country.
Tags: Child Abuse, death, Diabetes, Fundamentalism, medicine, Negligent homicide, Prayer, religion
April 28, 2008 at 12:05 pm
[...] There is news in the tragic case of Madeline Neumann: Marathon County District Attorney Jill Falstad has announced that the Neumanns will be charged [...]
April 29, 2008 at 8:52 am
[...] Neumann case In an addition to these posts, I would like to point to this individual’s page on the Neumanns as an example of what we can [...]
June 15, 2008 at 3:19 am
[...] Healing and Children The Wall Street Journal has an article about how the Neumann case and others like it have begun a push towards rolling back religious healing exemptions [...]