Fleeing From Life-Saving Cancer Treatment

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Police authorities are on a nation-wide search for a mother and her 13-year-old cancer-stricken son who fled after refusing chemotherapy that doctors say could save the boy’s life.  The two left their Minnesota home after a doctor’s appointment and X-ray showed his tumor had grown.  A court has issued an arrest warrant (ruling the mother in contempt of court), and has ordered that the boy be placed in foster care and immediately evaluated for treatment by a cancer specialist . 

His parents insist on alternative medicines, citing religious beliefs.  That led authorities to seek custody, as the court ruled that the boy’s parents were medically neglecting their son, as his form of cancer is considered highly curable with chemotherapy and radiation.

The parents believe in the philosophy of the Nemenhah Band, a Missouri-based religious group that believes in natural healing methods with herbal supplements, vitamins, ionized water and such.  However, lately the dad has jumped ideological ships and is now agreeing that his son needs the best treatment with a doctor of medicine.

All over the blogosphere, you can read arguments as to whether or not the court should be able to countermand the parents.  My opinion?  Absolutely yes…when it is clear that the child is in imminent harm and there are the means to rescue him.

This child is in imminent harm because of his parents and the cancer itself.  Since the cancer is likely curable, it is unconscionable for his life to be taken by parents who choose some extreme religious views which put their child on the road to death.  Secondly, the child, 13, cannot read due to some learning disability.  I question whether or not the parents helped him with that problem either.  Since the boy cannot read, he is relying on the “wisdom” of his parents, who are not giving him the truth, which is “chemo will save you and herbs will let you die in pain.”

Personally, I am very respectful of most (not all) religious views.  I am completely disrespectful of religious views which result in taking the life of an innocent - in this case, robbing the life of an innocent child.

Endurance, Not Therapy, Is The Answer to Some of Life’s Challenges

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How did we as a people get so “knee jerk” about going into therapy every time we face a challenge or disappointment?

One caller to my radio program was having her three year old son tested for muscular dystrophy, a devastating illness, and the results wouldn’t be coming for two weeks.  She wanted to know how to “cope” with the two week wait.  I told her that she was simply going to feel stressed and scared - that was normal, and was to be “endured.”  She, like many others realizing they had to feel some emotional pain for a while, asked if she should go into therapy!

I asked her what she thought the folks who blazed the trail west in covered wagons did when people died of illness or accident, or if the Indians attacked or food got scarce?  Did they all line up in front of a therapist’s tent to express their pain and look for a magic cure to get through the sometimes unpleasant realities of life, or did they pray, hold onto each other and ultimately….endure?

She laughed, and said, “I see what you mean.”

We are sturdier creatures than we take credit for.  I am a licensed therapist, and there are, indeed, situations in which individuals cannot endure, due to a distinct compromise in a person’s ability to be rational, such as mental illness or severe trauma.  In these situations, I refer people to mental health professionals. 

But most things in life that we must deal with often are best served with some love, some advice, some prayer, and an acknowledgment that sometimes life just doesn’t feel good for a while.

I have told innumerable callers that there is no quick fix for a bad situation - and sometimes, there is no “fix” at all.  I tell them also to turn to each other (family and friends), rather than turn on each other with resentment, frustration, or anger.

Much of life must be endured.  There is still always beauty, such as seeing the flowers among the fertilizer, and there is always light (hope and alternatives).

Raising Children With Religion

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My parents came from different religions, and, as often happens in “mixed” marriages, I was raised with no strong religious affiliation. So when I get asked whether or not moral and ethical kids can be raised without religion, I have a response that is both professional and very personal:

Or watch other videos at youtube.com/DrLaura

The God Wars

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Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god?  Just be good for goodness’ sake” will appear on Washington D.C., buses starting this week and running through December.  The American Humanist Association recently announced the controversial $40,000 holiday campaign.

Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group told the Associated Press: “Our reason for doing it during the holidays is there are an awful lot of agnostics, atheists and other types of non-theists who feel a little alone during the holidays because of its association with traditional religion.”

No matter what side of the Christmas and God wars you may be on, that is one lame excuse for challenging the majority of people in the United States who are “believers” (92% according a poll by the Pew Research Center).

 I am Jewish and have never felt “alone” because the end-of-the-year holiday event of the country was “Christian”; Christmas is a lovely spectacle no matter what your beliefs, and for those who are seriously Christian, it is additionally a sacred time.

Last month, the British Humanist Association upped the ante with their bus sign campaign, which said:  “There’s probably no God.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”  At least the American version still holds to the idea of doing good, while the British version is like letting kids go wild in a candy store claiming there are no such things as cavities or obesity.
    
American Family Association president, Tim Wildmon, calls the American Humanist’s ad, “…stupid.  How do we define ‘good’ if we don’t believe in God?  God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and bad and right and wrong.  If we are each ourselves defining what’s good, it’s going to be a crazy world.”

Don Feder, editor of the “Boycott The New York Times” website, demanded equal space in the New York Times for the display of religious symbols as he perceives the paper to have a “relentless drive to secularize society.”

Feder writes: “The New York Times gives the game away when it insists that public property ‘must be open to all religions on an equal basis - or open to none at all.’  In other words, a town that chooses to display the Ten Commandments - which are sacred to 90% of the American people and an integral part of our nation’s heritage - has to give equal space to every other faith and New Age sect that’s out there.  In reality, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was intended to prohibit a state church, like the Church of England.
 
“If the Founders thought giving one religion preference was odious, why was Congress’s first official act to hire a Christian chaplain?  And why did the first Congress appropriate sums of money for Christian missionaries to the Indian tribes?  What about ‘In God We Trust’ on our currency and ‘One Nation under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance - which clearly give preference to Judeo- Christian tradition over Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Summunism?”

To read more from Don Feder’s point of view: www.boycottnyt.com and www.aim.org.

Bill Maher’s “Religulous”

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Newark, New Jersey’s Roman Catholic archbishop, John Myers,  is upset that part of Bill Maher’s movie, Religulous (a combination of the words “religion” and “ridiculous”), was filmed at a Bergen County parish under false pretenses.  Maher told the parish’s Very Reverend Charles Grandstrand that he wanted to film his Jewish mother there, because the church was such a big part of her life.  His father was a Catholic.  Maher told the parish folks that the movie he was making would be called A Spiritual Journey.

Recently, during his appearance on Larry King’s CNN program to promote his activities, Maher said: “This is funny.  Religion accusing me of deception.   Religion, the greatest scam in the history of the world…selling the invisible product for thousands of years, accusing us of deception?  [he laughs]  We don’t lie to people.   What we didn’t tell people [i.e., when he was producing the movie] was that it was me doing the interview.  They didn’t ask, and we didn’t feel an obligation to tell them.”

This is such hypocrisy that I can hardly type.  Hypocrisy, for those who use it as a daily epithet towards somebody whose point of view they simply don’t like, is a behavior of espousing and living in counterpoint.  He accuses religious folks of lying about the divine and about faith, while he lies to people to use and embarrass them.  And this, my friends, gets you a television show, after losing another one for calling the September 11 terrorists braver than Americans.