We have written a lot about people who reject science-based medicine and turn to complementary/alternative medicine (CAM), but what about people who reject the very idea of medical treatment?
Some young HIV patients are giving up their medicine after being told by Pentecostal Church pastors to rely on faith in God instead, doctors warn.
Medical staff told the BBC a minority of pastors in England were endangering young church members by putting them under pressure to stop medication.
assholes - fuck this fucking noise
Parents try to pray away an inflamed, and then burst appendix, in a country where routine surgery will fix it; sixteen year old boy dies. They basically get away with it. Awesome. ~Mooglets
Catholic Hospital Denies Gay Man HIV Medicine
A Catholic hospitalis being suedfor denial of HIV medication to a gay man “for going against God’s will.”
Trinitas Regional Medical Center, says Joao Simoes, admitted him last August but then denied him the medicine he needed and also would not let his sister see him.
Denial of access to medicine for people living with HIV/AIDS, even for short periods, can have serious consequences for long term survival because ofdrug resistance. This can result from missing as few as five doses — which Simoes says he missed.
The complaint says that after admittance he metDr. Susan V. Borga. She asked him how he had acquired HIV and “closed the plaintiff’s file, put it down and looked at plaintiff with disgust on her face and asked, coldly, ‘Is that from sex with men?’”
Three days later, he was finally permitted to ring his personal physician and learned that he had already told Borga about his medication, but he had not received any or been visited by any doctor.
Borga had allegedly told his physician: “You must be gay, too, if you’re his doctor.”
The complaint adds:
Additionally, apparently realizing that plaintiff’s doctor had an accent, Dr. Borga exclaimed, “What, do you need a translator?” to which plaintiff’s doctor had again responded that Dr. Borga needed to give plaintiff his HIV medication.
Dr. Borga responded to plaintiff’s doctor by stating, “This is what he gets for going against God’s will,” and hung up the phone on plaintiff’s doctor.
American Medical Association (AMA) policy is that“physicians can conscientiously object to the treatment of a patient only in non-emergent situations” and that they “must provide alternative(s) which include a prompt and appropriate referral.”
Principle I of the AMA Principles of Medical Ethics calls upon physicians to provide medical care with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights. Accordingly, physicians may not decline to accept patients based on their race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or “any other basis that would constitute invidious discrimination”
You can sign a petition to Trinitas here.
That is some fucked up shit right there.
~Mooglets
Nurse Who Ignored Job and Cried for Jesus' Help Thrown Out of Profession
- Omolayo Abayomi cried 'Jesus help him' 20 times before the child’s mother told her to ‘shut up’
- Nurse told hearing her behaviour was 'no more than a bad day at the office'
A nurse who threw her hands into the air and begged for Jesus to help as a baby suffered a heart attack has been thrown out of the profession.
Omolayo Abayomi 'panicked' when the child, who suffered from a chronic lung disease, turned blue and stopped breathing in his cot at home.
The 51-year-old called for divine intervention more than 20 times before the vulnerable boy's mother told her to 'shut up'.
'The nurse was constantly saying "Jesus help him" and waving her arms around,' a hearing was told.
The nurse 'provided wholly inadequate care' by leaving the frantic mother to resuscitate her lifeless son, while the father dialled 999.
Abayomi was found guilty of a string of charges by the Nursing and Midwifery Council at a hearing in central London.
Sydney Topping, for Abayomi, insisted his client's behaviour had represented no more than a 'bad day at the office' and urged the panel to let her off with a caution.
'Once in a while you have a bad day at the office,' he said.
'I would suggest that on April 8 the registrant had a bad day at the office. It was no worse than that. She has bounced back since then.'
The hearing heard that the child, referred to a Patient A, and his twin sister were born three months premature at Homerton University Hospital in Hackney, east London, and as a result suffered from a number of serious illnesses and so required round-the-clock care.
Joanna Dirmikis, for the NMC, said Abayomi had been employed by private nursing firm Paediatric Nursing Link to look after the infant, who required 22 hours of nursing care every day.
The parents were woken by a knock on their bedroom door at 5am on April 8, 2007, to find their son lying lifeless after suffering respiratory cardiac arrest, the panel was told.
'While Mrs A was trying to resuscitate the child, Mr A called 999,' said Miss Dirmikis.
'The twin sister of the little boy was also present during the incident and can be heard crying in the background during the call.'
'She panicked and at one stage even summoned divine intervention, calling for Jesus,' she added.
Paramedics rushed the boy to Whipps Cross Hospital in Leytonstone, east London, before he was taken to Great Ormond Street Hospital on the same day for further treatment.
Giving evidence, a tearful Mrs A said Abayomi had effectively 'abandoned' her during the incident.
'The nurse was constantly saying "Jesus help him" and waving her arms around,' she said.
'She said it more than 20 times. I felt I had to do everything - at that point she was doing nothing to help my son.
'She never offered to take the lead at any point and at no point did she suggest calling 999.
'I can't change what's happened to my son, I know I did the best for him but the nurse just completely abandoned her duty.
'If I can save just one other person from having to go through what we have been through, then that's what I want to do.'
The panel heard Patient A, now aged five, made a full recovery from the incident but is still totally dependent on others for his care.
Abaymo claimed the mother had pushed her away and refused to let her help.
She denied calling out for Jesus, panicking and failing to provide care or basic life support.
The nurse further denied failing to properly handover the case to paramedics and making inaccurate and false notes about the incident.
She was cleared of specific charges that she suctioned the child's tracheostomy tube or that she failed to record observations taken but was found guilty of misconduct and ruled unfit to continue working without restrictions.
Striking Abayomi off, panel chair John Williams said: 'This was a failure to accept responsibility for her role in the events by the registrant.
'She has shown a lack of empathy with the parents of the child and there has been no admission or apology, and therefore no insight.
'This failure is incompatible with her continuing to be a registered nurse.'
From the DailyMail (via Halvetebrann)
Firstly - what the FUCK was this Nurse even doing being a Nurse if she's going to drop all her goddamned medical training and start praying, when a fucking baby needs her help?
Secondly - why the fuck are people happy enough to say 'praying doesn't work' after the fact? But not willing to go out and say 'praying doesn't work' to the masses and convince religious people that they should pack that shit in and just get with the program?
Ugh.
~Mooglets
Abortion advice from Nadine Dorries is classic backstreet politics: The campaign to put abortion counselling in the hands of faith-based groups is grubby and mendacious
There are two main problems with Nadine Dorries's amendment to the health and social care bill: the first is that it looks innocuous. Who could object to independent counselling for women seeking abortions? It sounds so generous and caring, like getting free dental work when you're pregnant. The second problem is that any discussion of the abortion amendment risks drawing fire away from the rest of the bill, which desecrates the NHS. There is no answer to that, apart from to carry on protesting against the whole thing. But back to Dorries's amendment: it is not innocuous. The fact that it looks that way is critical to how dangerous it is.
The exact wording is this: the government should provide "independent information, advice and counselling services for women requesting termination of pregnancy to the extent that the consortium considers they will choose to use them". "Independent" is defined as "a private body that does not itself provide for the termination of pregnancies or a statutory body".
In other words, GPs decide how much counselling to provide, and it can be provided by anyone except those performing the abortion. There is no requirement that "independent" mean "not faith-based": we'd have to rely on the discretion of the Department of Health to keep out groups such as CareConfidential, whose "counselling" consists of misinformation aimed at discouraging women from having abortions.
The ethics of allowing faith-based groups to have a central role in healthcare provision have been well rehearsed: there's an interesting tangential point, here, when you look at the other work undertaken by charities lining up to do abortion counselling. Groups such as New Frontiers (a church run by David Stroud, husband of Iain Duncan Smith's special adviser, Philippa) have a number of "social action projects", including crisis pregnancy and post-abortion counselling, parenting lessons and helping ex-offenders. Women with unwanted pregnancies are recast, in this parlance, as another "vulnerable" group. "Vulnerable", by the way, is just Tory for "you're a big social problem, but we don't judge" – so a family on the breadline is "vulnerable" and so is a prostitute; a Muslim student who tutors think might turn extremist is "vulnerable", and so is an ex-con. What the implications are of this new terminology is a conversation to have another day, but it will surprise any woman who's been accidentally pregnant to find that, by dint of her fertility, she's joined the ranks of vulnerability.
But right now none of that is the problem: the problem is that this amendment expressly removes the right of organisations such as Marie Stopes and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service to impart information. Immediately, then, the process of getting an abortion is disrupted. If you can't get information from the provider, you have to go elsewhere: that "elsewhere" is at your GP's discretion. You might find that New Frontiers is the only place to go. Or you might find that there's just a leaflet.
So let's go back to why Dorries objects to the BPAS's advice. She claims they are salesmen, motivated by profit to encourage abortions. I have a grudging admiration for the way she takes a classic leftwing argument – don't trust the suits, they're in it for themselves – and uses it against the classically leftwing constituency of pro-choicers. But this joke isn't funny any more: BPAS is a charity. There is no profit motive.
Dorries reserves particular anger for the consultation process at BPAS, which she described to me when I interviewed her recently: "When you go in for an abortion, you're counselled in this room which has no end of soft-marketing techniques around you, you are told, don't worry, three out of four women have had this at your age. That's like going into an off-licence and saying 'Is this wine nice?', and them saying, 'Well, we sell a lot of it'."
That figure is wrong: it's one in three. The phraseology is wrong: they don't have a little chart to tell them what proportion of women have had an abortion and in which age group. The description is wrong – soft marketing techniques? It's just a room with some chairs. Just by having had an abortion, I already know infinitely more that either Dorries or theLabour MP Frank Field, neither of whom have ever contacted BPAS to ask about its consultation process or look around a clinic. They have no evidence of biased advice, but Field dismissed that point this week with this unbelievable analogy: "We had no evidence of mis-selling of pensions until people investigated." Never mind that: out of the blue he wants us to judge a charity by the same standards as a dishonest financial corporation. If he does think this should be investigated, why not investigate? Why just remove the advice function from abortion clinics on grounds that you've got no evidence for and you haven't examined in the slightest?
Dorries says that she is pro-choice, but wants to see the time limit brought down. Her amendment would of course necessarily delay the process. More to the point, in 2000 40% of abortions performed by BPAS were at under 10 weeks. In 2010, that figure was 75%. They modestly put this down to Poundland starting to sell cheaper pregnancy tests, but it is also down to their excellent standards of care. In other words, if you are an MP who holds the same views as Dorries and Field – you are pro-choice, but want to see the gestational age of aborted foetuses brought down – then two main organisations meeting that aim are, by design, BPAS; and, by accident, Poundland.
There is a second amendment that also sounds innocuous: to remove responsibility for abortion guidelines from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and give it to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. Again, the aim is to discredit the Royal College committee that does the guidelines. "They're all abortionists! They all earn their livings from abortions," Dorries told me.
Every line – from the pro-choice intent and the slurs against BPAS and the RCOG, to the fake "independence" of the bodies waiting to take on this counselling – every element of these two amendments is mendacious. MPs who are pro-choice should be fighting harder, if not for women, then for their own credibility. Even MPs who are anti-abortion should consider if they can, in conscience, support an argument that has been so dishonestly made. To my mind, this is more dangerous to parliamentary process, and the reputation of politicians, than it is to women's reproductive health. It's grubby and it's secretive: it's backstreet politics.
From the Guardian newspaper by Zoe Williams
UK Parliament, I am dissapoint. Seriously. I've so far not needed an abortion, but to put it bluntly, I would rather slap a 'religious councilor' than listen to their stupid fucking religious based entreaties for me to keep the damn pregnancy. I can't believe Dorries is even getting away with this. Ugh.
~Mooglets
#atheist#atheism#theist#theism#religious#religion#faith#belief#abortion#abortion rights#medical#medicine#politics#political#parliament#Nadine Dorries#Dorries#NHS#RCOG#BPAS#Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists#British Pregnancy Advisory Service#pregnancy#pregnant#Marie Stopes#UK#England#Scotland#Wales#Ireland
The faith healers who claim they can cure cancer
A group of faith healers who claim they have miracle cures for cancer and HIV have been condemned as "irresponsible, even criminal" by a professor of complementary medicine, following a BBC Newsnight investigation.
The group of healers, collectively known as ThetaHealing, claim that their technique - which focuses on thought and prayer - can teach people to use their natural intuition and "brain wave cycle" to "create instantaneous physical and emotional healing."
ThetaHealing have about 600 practitioners in the UK who charge up to £100 per session.
But the healers' claims have been called "criminal" and "not supported by any kind of evidence" by Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, whose unit not only carry out their own studies but also assess those done by other researchers.
Newsnight recorded Warrington-based ThetaHealing practitioner Jenny Johnstone - who charges £30 for a telephone call or £400 for a course - making a number of claims about the technique, including:
"There was a baby I worked on over the telephone and from one day to the next the cancer in his stomach had just disappeared."
Professor Ernst says such claims are "irresponsible, even criminal".
He believes that the ThetaHealing group try to distinguish themselves from the other 20,000 faith healers in the UK by applying a "veneer of science", but says "it's still nonsense".
'Instant healing'
Repeated clinical trials appear to show that although such faith healing might make people feel better, it does not cure disease. Professor Ernst conducted one such trial which pitched faith healers against actors pretending to be faith healers and found the actors performed better than the healers.
"There was never any suggestion I should go back to my doctor, which is what I needed to do," he told us.
One former client of ThetaHealing - who did not wish to be identified - told the BBC that he was "angry and embarrassed" that he had wasted £1,200 on their healing and missed two years of proper medical treatment.
On ThetaHealing's website it says that Vianna Stibal, the American founder of the group, "facilitated her own instant healing from cancer in 1995".
It also says that Ms Stibal conducts seminars around the world to teach people about ThetaHealing, and that she has trained teachers and practitioners who are now working in 14 countries.
Earlier this month, Ms Stibal visited the UK to address a meeting at the London School of Economics (LSE).
At the meeting Ms Stibal responded to a question from an audience member who asked if it was possible for ThetaHealing to make an amputated leg grow back:
"I believe it's possible to grow it back… a lady grew back her ovary... you can grow back a leg. I've seen people grow back," she told attendees.
Some of the 100 people who attended the event told a BBC researcher that they were reassured about the legitimacy of the group by the fact that the meeting was being held at the LSE.
The LSE told Newsnight that ThetaHealing's meeting was a "normal commercial booking".
Further remarks made by Vianna Stibal at the London meeting, whereby she claimed that ThetaHealing could effectively reduce HIV to undetectable levels, have also alarmed Aids charity the Terrence Higgins Trust.
"The fact is we've seen charlatans of this kind all the way through the HIV epidemic," Lisa Power of the Trust told Newsnight. "Those charlatans are more dangerous than ever now that we have effective treatment."
Ms Power worries that some patients could put their lives at risk by delaying taking effective anti-retroviral drugs in favour of pursuing faith healing.
Both Vianna Stibal and Jenny Johnstone refused to answer questions from Newsnight. Ms Johnstone still insists she has healed a baby's stomach cancer, but said there was no point in her trying to prove it because the BBC would not believe her anyway.
From BBC News
Please excuse me while I swear a bit.
I fucking hate 'faith healers' and 'alternative therapists' and 'psychics'. All with an equal burning passion, likened to the power of a thousand burning suns. I hate them. I fucking hate them.
These people are nothing but predatory assholes. Some may be deluded into thinking they really are imbued with fantastical powers, but most are simply assholes out to make a quick buck.
They don't have the science to back them. They don't even have the slightest shred of evidence to back them. Yet they are given a veneer of respectability and con people at every turn. Assholes.
These people prey on the weak, the desperate, the gullible, the people who have no more hope and the people who are themselves deluded. It sickens me, it really does.
I swear, we need to have a law in place, especially for those making medical claims. Prove it. Prove that you can do what you claim, by going through strict scientific testing - like every drug and treatment offered by real medical staff - and then you can peddle it.
But of course, none of them will be willing to do that, because none of them will pass the tests. None of them will get so far as a minute into the testing before being shown to be assholes peddling bullshit.
There's a quote from Tim Minchin that covers this nicely:
'Do you know what we call alternative medicine that works? Medicine!'
Because if this stuff was proven effective, rather than less than placebo, it would have long been integrated into real medical practice.
But no. the people who peddle this shit won't accept that, either. They'll come up with all sorts of asinine conspiracy theories instead.
- 'If they accepted this into real medicine, it would take all the money away from Big Pharma.'
- 'If they accepted it as real medicine, it would put Doctors out of their jobs.'
- 'The Government wants people to be sick.'
- 'The Government causes half the problems we clear up, so they don't want us to be accepted.'
Bull. Shit.
As you can tell from this little rant, I'm not only an atheist, but also a strident skeptic. If you can't prove the veracity of your claims? I won't accept them and will call you on your bullshit. That simple.
~Mooglets
‘NHS doctors have a duty of care that does not include proselytising’: BHA comments as Christian GP investigated following complaint
An NHS doctor who is reported to have discussed Christianity ‘thousands of times’ with patients is being investigated following a complaint to the General Medical Council (GMC), the regulatory body for doctors. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has said that doctors have a duty of care to patients that does not include proselytising.
Dr Richard Scott, a former missionary and a lay preacher, is being supported by the Christian Legal Centre, the sister legal organisation of the socially conservative lobby group Christian Concern, which aims to ‘introduce a Christian voice into law, the media and government’. The BHA has reported on a number of cases raised by the Christian Legal Centre on the grounds of discrimination, including those of a Christian registrar and a couple who wished to foster children, and the subsequent dismissal of these arguments in the courts.
BHA Head of Public Affairs Naomi Phillips commented, ‘The GP’s surgery is surely a place where the needs and rights of the patients must be paramount. A doctor’s personal religious beliefs, however deeply held, are not medical care and clearly should not become part of the service that they provide to the community. In this particular case it seems that a patient was so distressed by the discussion or imposition of religion during his consultation with this doctor that he complained about his experience. The duty of care that a doctor or other medical practitioners have towards patients does not include proselytising.’
Notes
For further comment or information contact Naomi Phillips at [email protected] or 020 7079 3585.
Read the BHA’s criticism of false discrimination cases
The British Humanist Association is the national charity working on behalf of ethically concerned, non-religious people in the UK. It is the largest organisation in the UK campaigning for an end to religious privilege and to discrimination based on religion or belief, and for a secular state. a secular state.
From Humanism.org
Let's see this quote again, shall we?
‘The GP’s surgery is surely a place where the needs and rights of the patients must be paramount. A doctor’s personal religious beliefs, however deeply held, are not medical care and clearly should not become part of the service that they provide to the community. In this particular case it seems that a patient was so distressed by the discussion or imposition of religion during his consultation with this doctor that he complained about his experience. The duty of care that a doctor or other medical practitioners have towards patients does not include proselytising.’
My bold.
This is one of the reasons I absolutely hate the incursion of religion into our medical care. Patients and medical staff are well within their rights to have their beliefs - but as soon as they start appearing during medical consultations? That's when I get angry.
Science and magic do not mix, for science is based in reality, magic is based in fantasy.
Keep religion OUT of medical care.
~Mooglets