Monday, April 28, 2008

Of course you pray

Believer or not, of course you pray when your 11-year-old daughter lapses unconscious. But you do something, too. The grandmother wanted a doctor, but even she was too unassertive, and the emergency call had to come - too late - from a thousand miles away!

Diabetic ketoacidosis has other signs besides profound fatigue. Unquenchable thirst and constant urination as the body dumps sugar through the urine are a couple. My own mother diagnosed my sister at age 11 from ketones on the breath, thirst, urination, and weight loss. Not everyone has read her brother's med school text books, but most any conscious parent would have the sense that this situation was out of control.

One open question: Did the Neumanns have health insurance? Did they try to rely on prayer because they didn't qualify for or hadn't signed up for SCHIP? Any health story like this should include that sort of question.

One irony: Under Sean Bell rules, the parents have nothing to fear from the DA's charges of negligent homicide. I doubt they'll get that break, however.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is WRONG with these people? Can anyone else in any civilized nation on this earth see what is WRONG - so unbelievably wrong, with what has happened here? I am truly amazed. I had thought - we progressed to a level much further than religious zealots. Affiliated or not, there is NOTHING on earth I would not do for my childrens health and well being. I can't even begin to tell you the amount of rage and uncomprehension that this news has given me. Forsake someone's life for prayer? Who is playing God now?? Who are you to decide? STEP UP PEOPLE! Innocent children are DYING!!!

Dwayne said...

I am not what you say a liberal, but these idiots are not reading the same bible that I read. They are a bunch of morons. I have a seven year old daughter and I am talking her to the doctor is she looks sick. That is the way I am. I am a certified EMT and the conditions that lead to this little girls death did not just happen over night. These parents are not worth the ground they walk on. Nice blog you have here.

Steve in MD said...

Unfortunately, the big issue here is not the death of the child, for which the parents deserve condemnation. The issue is the ability of religion to corrupt the brainwashed mind. And the history of the West is mostly the history of religion's corruption of the very meaning of God and Jesus. Think about the 50 million murdered during the Christian crusades, no wonder some parts of Muslim societies find it so easy to hate us. Think about the million burned at the stake as witches, so the church and the accuser could share the condemned's property. Think about the 90,000 +- tortured and murdered for daring to challenge the pope's authority that the world was flat, and other ignorances. Then the hatred of the Jews, Jesus own people, and it's ultimate presentation of in the holocaust and WWII, btw led b a man born a Catholic, apparently educated in a seminary, and who would thank "divine providence" several times for his survival of at least two assassination attempts. And today of course, these are the same hypocrites who talk about protecting life, while their great leader, Bush JR, causes the death of thousands of our troops in Iraq. And to many Iraqi's, of whom hundreds of thousands have died, we are just another Christian Crusader occupying an Arab land. And of course at home, since it isn't fashionable to blame the Jews, today's Bushies want to deny and denigrate our gay citizens to terrorize them and encourage their murders as well.

And lets not forget those "good Christians" who were behind America's greatest crime, slavery and segregation.

So in summary, religion is often a sop to blind their minds, destroy peoples hearts, not for the good of humanity, but for the power and money of some churches, who always had to have use some victim group to to rile up their people with hatred. All in the Name of God. And of course, Bush Jr and his minions use religion to blind these people to how they are being robbed for the benefit of the super-rich.

corsair the rational pirate said...

Why would you say "Of course you pray." These people did that and their daughter is dead. Did the prayer help in even the smallest way? No. As they say, "nothing fails like prayer".

These people are idiots who need to have their children taken away from them and placed with someone who isn't trying to live in the 6th century.

Then they need to go to jail for causing the death of a human being.

And did you see the comment about the devil trying to stop this mouth-breathing idiot from having a "ministry?" This wasn't about prayer or their daughter, it was about the incredible hubris of these jerks who think they have a direct line to god who will do their bidding.

I am so angry I can hardly see. Maybe I need to pray and ask for forgiveness.

lovable liberal said...

corsair, did you read past the headline? "But you do something, too," should have been a clue that I agree.

Prayer is a natural impulse, but only the strongly brainwashed stop with prayer.

I do think that this story may be more complicated than it first appears. The Neumanns said they had nothing against doctors. So what kept them from trying the local ER? Was it religion pure and simple, or was religion what they fell back on when they thought there was nothing else?

lovable liberal said...

Well, turns out I was wrong. The original AP story has been replaced by one with more detail, and the religious beliefs of her parents did kill this young girl - and they still expected her to rise from the dead after she died.