Two stories

[DanaC]

I just read two stories in the Guardian, which exist at such polar extremes from each other, that it really caught my attention.


First story was about the ongoing attempts by activists, many of whom are survivors of this particular kind of abuse, to remove the faith 'shield' from prosecution for refusing medical treatment for children on the grounds of sincerely held belief.

Mariah Walton’s voice is quiet – her lungs have been wrecked by her illness, and her respirator doesn’t help. But her tone is resolute.

“Yes, I would like to see my parents prosecuted.”

Why?

“They deserve it.” She pauses. “And it might stop others.”

Mariah is 20 but she’s frail and permanently disabled. She has pulmonary hypertension and when she’s not bedridden, she has to carry an oxygen tank that allows her to breathe. At times, she has had screws in her bones to anchor her breathing device. She may soon have no option for a cure except a heart and lung transplant – an extremely risky procedure.

All this could have been prevented in her infancy by closing a small congenital hole in her heart. It could even have been successfully treated in later years, before irreversible damage was done. But Mariah’s parents were fundamentalist Mormons who went off the grid in northern Idaho in the 1990s and refused to take their children to doctors, believing that illnesses could be healed through faith and the power of prayer.

As she grew sicker and sicker, Mariah’s parents would pray over her and use alternative medicine

(The article makes clear, btw, that this is not a mainstream Mormon stance)

Meanwhile:

In Canyon County, just west of the capital, the [Followers of Christ]Peaceful Valley cemetery is full of graves marking the deaths of children who lived a day, a week, a month. Last year, a taskforce set up by Idaho governor Butch Otter estimated that the child mortality rate for the Followers of Christ between 2002 and 2011 was 10 times that of Idaho as a whole.

One man's story of surviving FoC:

Slowly, Hoyt has developed the capacity for family life, after a life in the sect left him “unable to relate to families” for a long time. “I didn’t understand the concept,” he said.

He lost his faith around the age of five, when a baby died in his arms in the course of a failed healing. While elders prayed, Hoyt was in charge of removing its mucus with a suction device. He was told that the child died because of his own lack of faith. Something snapped, and he remembers thinking: “How can this possibly be God’s work?” His apostasy set up lifelong conflicts with his parents and church elders.

In just one incident, when he was 12, Hoyt broke his ankle during a wrestling tryout. “I ended up shattering two bones in my foot,” he said. His parents approached the situation with the usual Followers remedies – rubbing the injury with “rancid olive oil” and having him swig on Kosher wine.

Intermittently, they would have him attempt to walk. Each time, “my body would just go into shock and I would pass out”.

“I would wake up to my step-dad, my uncles and the other elders of the church kicking me and beating me, calling me a fag, because I didn’t have enough faith to let God come in and heal me, while my mom and my aunts were sitting there watching. And that’s called faith healing.”

He had so much time off with the untreated fracture that his school demanded a medical certificate to cover the absence. Forced to take him to a doctor, his mother spent most of the consultation accusing the doctor of being a pedophile.

He was given a cast and medication but immediately upon returning home, the medication was flushed down the toilet, leaving him with no pain relief. His second walking cast was cut off by male relatives at home with a circular saw.

Some states have removed the faith-nased protection from prosecution, but some have yet to doso. And,apparently the only reason it exists in the first place, is because in the '60s, when the federal legislation was being drafted it was heavily influenced by two of Nixon's advisors (later jailed over watergate) who were both members of a faith-healing sect.

“Because Erlichman and Haldeman were Christian Scientists, they had inserted into the law a provision that said those who believe that prayer is the only way to cure illness are exempted from this law,” he said.

They also ensure that states had to pass similar exemptions in order to access Capta funds. The federal requirement was later relaxed, but the resultant state laws have had to be painstakingly repealed one by one.

Read about the attempts to get this law repealed in some of the hold-out states here: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...g-medical-help

So, I had just gotten through reading all that (and there's a lot more to that article than what I posted) I return to the homepage and see this headline:

Brain implant helps paralysed man regain partial control of his hand

A 24-year-old man who was paralysed in an accident six years ago has regained some control of his hand using an implant that sends signals from his brain directly to the muscles that move his wrist and fingers.

Known as a neural bypass, the implant allows Ian Burkhart to swipe a credit card, play the video game, Guitar Hero, and perform actions such as picking up a bottle and pouring the contents, holding a phone to his ear, and stirring a cup. He is the first person to benefit from the technology.

Also a fascinating story.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...-neural-bypass