Ten-year-old Ohio resident Sarah Hershberger was diagnosed with leukemia (or, more likely, non-Hodgkin lymphoma). Chemotherapy was started, Sarah's tumors began to shrink and doctors estimated her survival chance at 85%. However, (surprise! surprise!) the side effects of chemotherapy were painful for Sarah, and apparently even more for her parents. Their best idea in the situation was to take her off the drugs and to use alternative herbal treatment to battle her cancer (!). The authorities intervened, and the parents together with Sarah fled the country to avoid forced chemotherapy. For more details, check Orac's blog.
A little twist to the story is that the Hershbergers are Amish. This is a loony sect of fanatics who deny technology. Cults of this sort are usually cited as religious freedom in action, but in reality only their founders enjoyed religious (or any other) freedom. Guess how much freedom you would have if you had had the poor luck to be born to such parents! Cult communities of this sort often seem cute from outside, with a show of pastoral happiness, until you have a closer look and discover that they are all tyranny and repression, especially of the weak, of women and children. All such cults survive by depriving their children of education and, hence, forcibly making every new generation unable to live outside the cult community. From Wikipedia: "They typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education at grade eight (age 13/14).""
The politically correct, tolerant charlatanism of our era requires us to "respect" other religions, cultures and views, no matter how insane or how dire their results. This inevitably replaces normal speech with a Newspeak which hides the truth behind piles of meaningless words. Take the following quotation from the above cited report by A. Perez and M. Jaffe in Yahoo!News: "Sarah Hershberger and her parents oppose chemotherapy, and have been fighting the Akron Children's Hospital in court after the family stopped Sarah's treatment." Someone should informed these so-called journalists with one-digit (combined) IQ that a child of 10 hasn't the cognitive ability or maturity of personality needed to "oppose" a treatment or to "fight" in court. It is well known that a pre-teen child will "oppose" any treatment that causes any discomfort, even to immense detriment of her own interests. This is why children are not allowed to take medical (or legal) decisions. Such decisions are left to their legal guardians (usually the parents) in the hope that these guardians will stand for the child's best interests and will have enough brains to figure out what these best interests are, at least in simple situations such as dealing with a treatable and otherwise fatal disease. Unfortunately, this hope often turns false.
It would be at least partly understandable if the parents had said that they prefer their daughter to die than to pass through so much suffering, and they alongside her. After all, when the strain of parenting becomes unbearable, while not let the troublesome child pass away and concentrate on the other six children? What disgusts me ultimately is not even the parents' decision to doom Sarah to possibly preventable death, but their experimentation with alternative, herbal "treatments". This is a circus performed to convince others, and most likely the Hershbergers themselves, that they are good, loving and caring parents who do their best for Sarah. They may well convince themselves, especially if they (like most other religious fanatics) think they have a direct hotline for communication with God. When the girl's cancer, this "emperor of all maladies" kills her, they will say it has been God's will. They may even invent a reason why He has done this - e.g. that He urgently needed a new little angel. But all this spinning will not change the fact that they and not God are responsible for whatever will happen to Sarah.
Damn idiotic hypocrites! To Hell with them!
A little twist to the story is that the Hershbergers are Amish. This is a loony sect of fanatics who deny technology. Cults of this sort are usually cited as religious freedom in action, but in reality only their founders enjoyed religious (or any other) freedom. Guess how much freedom you would have if you had had the poor luck to be born to such parents! Cult communities of this sort often seem cute from outside, with a show of pastoral happiness, until you have a closer look and discover that they are all tyranny and repression, especially of the weak, of women and children. All such cults survive by depriving their children of education and, hence, forcibly making every new generation unable to live outside the cult community. From Wikipedia: "They typically operate their own one-room schools and discontinue formal education at grade eight (age 13/14).""
The politically correct, tolerant charlatanism of our era requires us to "respect" other religions, cultures and views, no matter how insane or how dire their results. This inevitably replaces normal speech with a Newspeak which hides the truth behind piles of meaningless words. Take the following quotation from the above cited report by A. Perez and M. Jaffe in Yahoo!News: "Sarah Hershberger and her parents oppose chemotherapy, and have been fighting the Akron Children's Hospital in court after the family stopped Sarah's treatment." Someone should informed these so-called journalists with one-digit (combined) IQ that a child of 10 hasn't the cognitive ability or maturity of personality needed to "oppose" a treatment or to "fight" in court. It is well known that a pre-teen child will "oppose" any treatment that causes any discomfort, even to immense detriment of her own interests. This is why children are not allowed to take medical (or legal) decisions. Such decisions are left to their legal guardians (usually the parents) in the hope that these guardians will stand for the child's best interests and will have enough brains to figure out what these best interests are, at least in simple situations such as dealing with a treatable and otherwise fatal disease. Unfortunately, this hope often turns false.
It would be at least partly understandable if the parents had said that they prefer their daughter to die than to pass through so much suffering, and they alongside her. After all, when the strain of parenting becomes unbearable, while not let the troublesome child pass away and concentrate on the other six children? What disgusts me ultimately is not even the parents' decision to doom Sarah to possibly preventable death, but their experimentation with alternative, herbal "treatments". This is a circus performed to convince others, and most likely the Hershbergers themselves, that they are good, loving and caring parents who do their best for Sarah. They may well convince themselves, especially if they (like most other religious fanatics) think they have a direct hotline for communication with God. When the girl's cancer, this "emperor of all maladies" kills her, they will say it has been God's will. They may even invent a reason why He has done this - e.g. that He urgently needed a new little angel. But all this spinning will not change the fact that they and not God are responsible for whatever will happen to Sarah.
Damn idiotic hypocrites! To Hell with them!
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