Sayonara

No. Choosing to utilise prayer as a healing technique on the basis of their church telling them that only prayer can heal (i.e. only prayer is an effective treatment) is not the same as deciding that medical care is too risky. Interesting angle. I am not making the case that the state should have power over people's children. I am making the case that there are situations where the arbitrary beliefs of the parents create such an unjustifiable obstruction to critical medical aid that the right of the child to live far outweighs the rights of the parents to act out life-threatening decisions which are based in those beliefs. I am not making the case that people should have treatment forced on them - we have not even got onto discussing the details of any system that might be used to prevent future cases such as Kara's. The reason I have never broached this is that I never intended to propose it; I think you misinterpreted my position. When I originally stated that the right to life trumps the right to religious belief, I meant that the former would take precedence over the latter in a court of law. I am making the case that a person's status as a parent does not necessarily mean that they have the right to impose negligent or harmful decisions on their child. So what would you say Kara's parents did with her right to chose to live? And I am saying that there are situations where the best option is so blazingly clear that people who obstruct it should be held fully accountable. This is what the Neumann's face. They will have to show that it was not reasonable for them to have known the likely consequences of their actions; that they were not reckless with the life of their child in choosing prayer over medicine. Again, do you think that Kara's choice was to lay down and die? Stop conflating personal choice with parent-enforced decisions. You are factually incorrect here. There needs to be a reasonable belief that a person is not in a position to make the decision for themselves, not "proof". The point of having appropriate adults for those who cannot lawfully consent is to ensure that their best interests are maintained. I am making the case that people like the Neumanns are not Appropriate Adults, and the system by which Appropriate Adults are identified already accommodates such discrimination. No, but there are laws requiring people to take reasonable steps to preserve life. Not good enough for what? For saving the lives of children it certainly is. For appeasing your sense of fairness, it probably isn't, but that has not been my concern in this discussion. No such proof is necessary. What is necessary is that when a child is critically ill, they receive the course of treatment which gives them the best chances of recovering. Again, proof is not necessary. The reasonable person standard addresses this, regardless of whether you chose to take notice of it. You are still equivocating. It is not the case that the child is being forced into treatment in the scenario I am discussing. The force being used is only that which vetoes the right of the parent to arbitrarily block life-saving medical treatment on the basis of superstitious drivel, and I say that is force well used. If people wish to substitute prayer for well-proven, well-documented, biologically trivial, life-saving treatments, then the onus should be - and legally is, as we see with the Neumann's being held accountable in court - on them to demonstrate their convictions in its efficacy. Well then prioritise. Chose the welfare of children like Kara, or your comfort. Why would you "force medical treatment on a child who was not in danger"? That is not the proposal at all. I am not sure that unlawful death by parental negligence is quite in the same ballpark as medical accidents, and even less sure that either of them should be labelled "murder". Murder has a specific legal definition which is largely based around intent. I do take your point, but since (as I have stated) I am not talking about children being whisked off and having careless medical procedures performed on them for no real reason I think that any deaths resulting from medical intervention are far more likely to result from help arriving too late, rather than some kind of weird scenario where rescued children spontaneously become abnormally likely to experience medical accidents. In case it was not clear before, I am talking about a specific sort of parent. The sort who will let their child lie on the floor dying while they pray to a magical being who they should reasonably suspect is less capable and/or willing of saving their child than staff at the local hospital. Normally I would like to protect their right to hold those beliefs, but under these specific circumstances the right of the child to live trumps their faith a thousand times over and I do not give a good god hippy damn about their perspective. I am not trying to make a political argument here. I am pointing out the very obvious and real-world failure of Kara's parents to fulfil the role of Appropriate Adult. Their own decisions and actions led to this failure and they must accept the consequences that go with them. What sort of a society would waive those consequences on the basis of individual power? How many dead children does personal freedom for parents need to cost? And yet we both know what the best chances would have been for Kara, had the choice been available. Arrrr! You changed the end of your post! Your continued assumption that children are going to be killed left right and centre aside, a situation where the parents have been lawfully circumvented and treatment given to their child despite their religious beliefs and that child subsequently dies is no different to a situation where a child dies in medical care where the parents have consented to the procedure. Unless there are different ways of being dead which I have just missed, that is. The difference lies in the steps which lead the child to being treated, and this is a separate legal issue. Yes, and that passes the reasonable person test. The risk is always there and yet we continue to use medicine because the level of risk is so vastly overwhelmed by the benefits.

I agree with that perspective.

/me goes off to start a thread on Arbosexual Rights.

Presumably their beliefs do not extend to god knowing CPR. It is good to see that they were not completely brutal in the execution of their faith, but I doubt that this will absolve them of negligence in the eyes of a courtroom.

Nobody here is going to help you steal licensed software. Take NeonBlack's advice.

This misses the point entirely. This is partly due to ParanoiA's spurious inclusion of the idea of "forced treatment" into the equation. In the scenario under discussion, the only "force" used is that which is needed to take the decision regarding the child's treatment away from the parents. Kara's parents were not saving her from having treatment forced on her. They willingly prevented medical treatment by knowingly abstaining from a visit to the doctor and thereby evading a diagnosis. They did this because their religious belief is that only prayer can heal. They therefore made the decision that Kara would not receive any form of medical treatment on the basis of their subscription to that plainly false hypothesis. They were negligent. It's that simple. A court will have to show that they ought to have known the consequences of their inaction. Since the last time they took Kara to the doctor's was when she was three, one imagines that they at some point recognised the importance of health care. It seems that their church has become a more dominant force in their lives since that time but their personal history will likely find them out at court. Parent OR individual? Which would you say could have applied to Kara? Only "individual", obviously. But who prevented her from exercising that right? Ignore the idea of "forced treatment" since it is a different argument, and change your last sentence to "treatment given to children despite religious objections would save very few lives, at a large cost to freedom." My view on this is that the overall cost to freedom would be small compared to the benefit gained. I personally would rather see a handful of children live every year than let them die for no other reason than to enshrine the crackpot beliefs of people who are too selfish, arrogant, or woefully misled to protect their own children. By all means people may point out that certain freedoms may be lost, but none of them should expect me to shed a tear for people losing the right to kill children because they want to believe in dark age superstitions. Right, it's all Kara's fault. Do you know how diabetes type-I affects the human body? Diabetics undergoing diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) can slip into a diabetic coma very quickly. The early signs include sluggishness and tiredness, the later signs include confusion, apathy, and weakness. If, as in this case, the condition is undiagnosed, the sufferer will not know what is happening and may even make matters worse by having a little lie down until they feel better. The day before she died from DKA, Kara was lying on the floor unable to speak. She could only communicate by moving her eyes and moaning. At this point her condition was plainly critical but medically salvageable. Did her parents rush her to the emergency room? No. They went and prayed for a bit. It took a phone call from her aunt in California to the local sheriff's department to get an ambulance to the girl. She died on the way to hospital.

In the case of the Neumanns it was not even about treatment. So determined were they that only prayer can heal, they did not even take Kara to a doctor to diagnose her problem. Had they done so then I suspect the state may have acted more swiftly.

I think you may be missing the significance of lawful consent and parental responsibility.

Pmb has left anyway so I wouldn't expect any more posts from him.

I think you mean arbosexuality

Well that wasn't blatant.

The Neumann's didn't "weigh the risk of medical treatment". They held the belief that prayer alone would lead god to heal their child and consequently sat there and watched her die, instead of getting her to a doctor who could have diagnosed her diabetes and provided the frankly trivial solution to the problem. It had absolutely nothing to do with "weighing risk". Here is a picture of the couple at court: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/01/21/us/21faith.2.ready.html Do you know why they look self-satisfied instead of devastated from the lack of sleep and child-shaped hole in their lives? It's because they think that god took her back to heaven. Is that a basis on which you would allow children's fates to be decided? As Judge Howard put it, "the free exercise clause of the First Amendment protects religious belief, but not necessarily conduct." Yes, when you use words like "force" and "cut up" then trying to prevent unnecessary deaths is going to sound much worse than trying to obstruct your own child's medical treatment, even though a decision is being made on behalf of the child in either case. Discretion is one thing. Preventing your child from receiving treatment that will save their lives on no basis other than your belief in the magic powers of a space pixie is completely off the map. "Forced care" doesn't actually apply. What is happening is that the adult's role in the consent-provision is being filled by someone who is more capable of providing a decision that will serve the interests of the child. In the UK we call this person an "Appropriate Adult", I do not know what the term is in the USA but you probably have them over there too. Parenthood does not come with a special privilege that allows you to make whatever wacky decisions you like for your child without anyone being able to do anything about it. It is a position of legal and moral responsibility which defaults to the parent only because of their biological link with the child. If the parent can't fulfil that role, or puts the child at significant risk by trying, then someone else needs to do it for them. Mechanisms which support and act on this reasoning already exist. You are being a bit dramatic here. I am not talking about overriding "parental discretion". I am talking about removing the decision from parents who are too selfish and batshit crazy to realise that god won't stop their kid from dying, and no - it's not okay to just let them fly back to Jesus. We are a drama queen today, aren't we? Do you not see the contradiction here? The one that is absolutely crackers? Where were Kara's rights? Who was looking out for them? Religious fundies who watched her die, that's who. And why? Because their belief said only prayer could cure. It was never about what Kara wanted or needed. What you seem to be saying is "I foresee some complications and I'd rather not change things than risk things becoming more complicated." I don't see that as very compelling when we are talking about saving children who can't lawfully consent to their own life-saving medical treatment.

Then stop making this thread feel like such a struggle for the people who are trying to participate. No more false accusations of impropriety from the staff, no more demonstrably untrue claims of "posters denouncing me and my character", and no more bullying members with the threat of the dreaded ignore list. Everything else should sort itself out. Do we have an accord?

That is not the reply I was hoping for and I expected more from someone of your apparent capabilities. If you want your OP to be answered, then you need to adjust your attitude and become a part of the thread salvaging operation. If you no longer care, then simply stop replying.

I don't think anyone can say that I didn't warn them.

I should have been more specific. My apologies. I meant that the preservation of their child's life trumps the Neumanns' right to withhold treatment from her due to their own religious beliefs. Or at least it should. In the case where a person capable of legally consenting to medical treatment declines the same due to their own religious beliefs, in spite of the known outcome being their own death, then it is a different matter entirely.

Although those definitions state "physics" at the start of them, you need to be very careful about using dictionary definitions for technical scientific discussions. Especially in physics, where terms are defined and used very precisely.

You won't avoid moderator or admin action by ignoring it. False dichotomy. The staff here will get on with their jobs as per our policies regardless of whatever strategy you select. What utter hogwash. An ad hominem is, by definition, an attack against the person. I attacked your behaviour, which is entirely separate and easily modified on your part. I have no intention of validating your frankly overblown accusations by offering a defence or apology of any sort. I am not a moderator, I am an administrator. I am one of the four people who share responsibility for this site. I suggest that if you want to remain a contributing member on this site (and it would be a shame if you did not, since you are clearly inquisitive and passionate), then you should probably not as your first act here attempt to throw around weight which you simply do not have. Any member or guest can verify for themselves - simply by reading the intervening posts - that that is simply not true. Have you got a proper answer to the question in the OP? If not, since the thread is on suicide watch, everyone participating has a responsibility to improve the thread. So perhaps there is no need to throw out the baby with the bath water.

You have responded to the first line only, which means you either cannot or will not reply to the important part of the post. Respond to the pertinent content please, or don't respond at all. Also explain how I am being "arrogant" by getting this thread under control, which is one of my duties, and explain how I am being "closed minded" by pointing out the error of your ways. Finally I suggest that you not fling around the term "ad hominem attacks" like it is the ultimate defence against being spoken to in straight terms. Because it isn't.

And it was not grown on the mouse, but attached after being produced in a mould.

Victor, you are not the first person to drop in on us claiming that the world ignores their amazing inventions, so I just have one simple question for you: Why are you here?

I was hoping this thread would be about the limits of funk. I am very disappointed.

For ****'s sake Pmb, stop being so effing pedantic and deliberately obtuse. Mokele is saying that because of the lack of people he knows using the term "evolutionist", amongst the population where you say it occurs, the rate of its occurrence must be so low as to make the claim "evolutionary scientists call themselves evolutionists too" spurious at best. You yourself named just a couple of the hundreds of thousands who currently exist. If Brian Greene and Lee Smolin published pop-sci books in which they call their colleagues Fizzycysts, we would not make the claim that this is what physicists call themselves. It is insufficient. The only reason you are still arguing this is because you are making people's statements out to be absolutist when they are actually guilty of nothing more than lazy phrasing. So again, stop being so pedantic. Do you go up to people in clothes stores and correct them when you hear them saying "darling, nobody wears those any more"? No, of course not. Because you understand their particular use of the word "nobody".

Take a step back for a second and ask yourself some simple questions: 1) Do you really think that Mokele believes only rational people subscribe to the notion of evolution? 2) Do you really think that Mokele believes all rational people subscribe to the notion of evolution? 3) Do you really think that Mokele believes that failure to subscribe to the notion of evolution requires a person to not be rational?

Yawn, we have had this probability argument before. The incredibly high probabilities that get bandied about fall down due to the vast scope of potential for self-replicating molecular structures to emerge from quadrillions of interactions occurring in oceans of matter across millions of years.