Court Prevents Religious Child Abuse

In a story on MSNBC.COM today it was reported that a Minnesota District Court Judge has ruled that

[A] 13-year-old cancer patient whose parents want to treat him with “alternative medicine” must seek conventional medical treatment for their son.

In a 58-page ruling Friday, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been “medically neglected” and is in need of child protection services.

I will give you all two guesses as to why the young boy's parents want to treat him with a methodology that has shown less than 5% survival rate instead of chemo which, in cases like his, show up to a 90% survival rate. Note: Your second guess doesn't count. That's right...religion.

The boy in question, Daniel, happens to have been born to parents that believe in natural remedies for religious purposes. In fact, his mother testified in court that, “My son is not in any medical danger at this point.” This was something that medical experts and the judge found to be absolutely wrong. She also testified that Daniel is a medicine man and elder in the Nemenhah Band. As such, she explained, Daniel was the one who refused treatment, not his parents, but that they (his parents) support his decision.

Let's take a step back for a second here. Two parents have convinced a boy that he is a "medicine man" and and "elder" of their group of believers. They then claim that he made the decision to refuse chemo on his own. How disingenuous can you be? They fail to recognize that by brainwashing their children (yes, they have six) they have removed the ability of tier children to make any informed decision of their own free will. In fact, the court found that the boy... excuse me..."medicine man" ... didn't even know what what wrong with him. From the story:

The judge wrote that Daniel has only a “rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy. ... he does not believe he is ill currently. The fact is that he is very ill currently."

There are many atheists who are starting to describe the raising children to believe things that are in direct contradiction to science as child abuse. This is obviously a shocking concept to most people who have never thought about it, but cases such as this really bring it home. This is child abuse pure and simple. Did the court remove Daniel and his siblings form the home of these abusive parents? Of course not. It merely ordered new treatment which the boy may, in the end, refuse. Why do we let children stay with parents like this?

I am so tempted to give up sometimes.

UPDATE: After a technical issue and an absence, I have had to re-post all of my old posts. As a result there will be many posts listed as published today, Dec 3, 2009, that were posted sometime earlier in the year, but I do not know the exact date. this post is one of them.