Canadian judge rules that First Nations child's survival interests don't matter more than parental choice

In what has been described as a precedent setting case a Canadian judge has decided today that First Nations parents are well within their right to remove her child from hospital care and place it in an alternative healing outfit (registered in Florida as a massage parlour!). The 'doctor' practicing there has no medical qualifications.

Here's the background of the case: The child suffers from childhood leukemia. Standard chemotherapy has a 95% likelihood of complete remission of the cancer. The family in question has decided instead to transfer the child to an alternative healing facility. The child in question is 11 years old. The local Children's Aid Society decided not to intervene, because the parents were providing 'care' to their child. Apparently to the Children's Aid Society it didn't matter at all what the evidence of success for the parental 'care' was. Turns out that it is non-existent. Another First Nations child also 'treated' in said alternative healing facility has since experienced a serious deterioration in her health because leukemia has returned with a vengeance courtesy of the quack treatment meted out by the Florida based quack healer on behalf of the parents. The family paid close to 20,000 $ for the non-treatment of their child by the Florida based operator of said massage parlour.

Remarkably, the judge in the case seems to be buying into the postmodern relativism that drives the argument of the Children's Aid Society. Here's what the National Post reports from the trial

"But Justice Gethin Edward of the Ontario Court of Justice suggested physicians essentially want to “impose our world view on First Nation culture.” The idea of a cancer treatment being judged on the basis of statistics that quantify patients’ five-year survival rate is “completely foreign” to aboriginal ways, he said.
“Even if we say there is not one child who has been cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia by traditional methods, is that a reason to invoke child protection?” asked Justice Edward, noting that the girl’s mother believes she is doing what is best for her daughter.
“Are we to second guess her and say ‘You know what, we don’t care?’ … Maybe First Nations culture doesn’t require every child to be treated with chemotherapy and to survive for that culture to have value.”

This sounds almost farcical. The judge apparently doesn't think child survival is what's at stake, but the value of First Nations society. A nice sentiment so long as you aren't a vulnerable child desperately needing proven medical care. He is also essentialising aboriginality in an indefensible way. Here's what the CBC reports about the logic underlying his decision, 'Edward ruled that the young girl needs protection, but that the court had also to consider how aboriginal family rights apply in the case. As part of that consideration Edward described the traditional Haudenosaunee creation story to point out that the practice of traditional medicine existed before contact with Europeans.' The one thing that clearly doesn't feature at all as a relevant criterion is that thing some call 'scientific evidence'. Creation stories apparently trump that at any time.  - Surely, the essential question here is this: Should we, as a society override parental care decisions for their children in cases where there is overwhelming evidence that they're harming their children irreversibly, or, as in our case, where the children would die almost certainly?

The long and short of it is that we have always done this. The children's (objective) best (survival) interests trump parental best intentions, parental ignorance, parental fanaticism, parental scepticism with regard to mainstream medicine etc etc. Hospitals routinely override parental decisions by Jehova's Witnesses that refuse life-preserving blood transfusions for their children. And they are right to do so. There is no parental right to kill their children, not even with the best of intentions. Anyone recall the cases of children who died because their parents thought prayers would do the trick?

What is not known is whether these two cases (same hospital) are a result of a communications break-down between the health care professionals and the parents. But even if this was the case, it remains shocking that the Children's Aid Society could possibly justify its inaction with the view that the parents were just trying something different. Since when has the life of a child become so cheap that we leave it to misguided parents who wish to do as they see fit, evidence be damned?

The apparent 'justification' here is that it is a First Nations child. If this is a case of trying to make-up for past injustice, let me just say that this isn't quite a sensible way to go about this matter.

Seems a classic 'only in Canada' kind of event where society falls over itself trying to accommodate even the greatest nonsense. Child welfare clearly isn't that much of a priority. I'm glad to see that the hospital where both children would have been successfully treated took this case to court. Only once the courts of the land decide that child welfare isn't a relevant consideration and that parental good intentions intentions and the value of 'aboriginal culture' supersede child welfare concerns, can they make future treatment decisions that override patient well-being concerns.  

I do hope that the hospital will appeal this decision.

What is it about Christians and sex? Really...

Apologies to everyone for being a bit behind with blog postings these days. Russell Blackford and I are busily working away on our next book. It's going to be a follow-up to our popular 50 Voices of Disbelief - Why We Are Atheists. You can buy it now (other than in English) also in Polish, Korean and Spanish editions, if you feel so inclined. I understand that North Koreans won't be able to get their hands on the book because there is no picture of Kim Il Sung on the cover. My bad, should have thought of that :-). Anyhow, so we're close to completing the manuscript of a book tentatively called  50 Great Myths About Atheism. 

It is no secret that I am an atheist, and a gay one to boot, so there's no news in me having little time or patience for Christianity, Islam and whatever other religious this-n-that that has been invented by humans many centuries ago. I would not mind if god people went about their own business, praised their god in their houses of worship or at home and left it at that, but they don't seem to be able to stay out of OTHER people's lives. They just can't. It's not how they roll!

What truly drives me against the wall at the moment is aggressive campaigning by the Roman Catholic Church against marriage equality in the US and also the UK. In the UK, the Roman Catholic Church is now taking its campaign into its schools (taxpayer funded, that goes without saying, the Catholic Church wants maximum ideological influence in state affairs, but it hates paying for the privilege). Faith schools, of course, are a contradiction in terms. It's a bit like suggesting that there could be communist, capitalist, scientologist or any other ideological schools, as if there was more than one empirical reality to be taught. Now, IF that organisation was a beacon of morality and its senior management staff were known to abide by the Church's teachings all the time, I would still disagree with them, but there would be at least some begrudging respect from me for their consistency. The thing is, not a day goes by without further revelations of Cardinals (ie very senior Church management folks running around in usually wonderfully camp dresses - well, if you're into that sort of thing) protecting pedophiles amongst their staff (priests and upward) from state prosecution. They didn't even bother warning parents who mistakenly left their children in Church hands about the impending danger.  Really, I kid you not, they did not!

These same people think nothing of it to tell secular societies today how they should legislate in matters marriage. Old guys who never managed to hold a stable relationship with another human being in their lives - really? Old guys who count large numbers of pedophiles among their ranks lecture us - really? Do you, Roman Catholic Church, really have no shame at all?  On what grounds - really - do you claim competence in matters ethics or actual worldly life?

If you think, by the way, this was just a Catholic phenomenon... here's a Baptist preacher advising his congregation to beat up their kids, crack their wrists even, if they are suspicious the kids might be gay.

If you feel like reading up on Christianity's crimes throughout its history, you might want to take a closer look at learning German and reading Karlheinz Deschner's 10 (!) volume Criminal History of Christianity. It'll be well worth your time, and you likely will be even more reluctant to listen to Catholic clergy going on about morality.

The Catholic Church and its Sex Abuse Scandals

You might think, 'oi wei, there he goes again', but seriously, the ever-growing sex scandal in the Roman Catholic Church is surely something to savor by any atheist. Not because we wouldn't feel sorry for the children who have been abused sexually and otherwise by what amounts to thousands of priests who were supposed to look after them in some role or other. One has every reason to feel sorry for them. Equally though, this IS another case of 'we told you so'.

I don't want to dwell too much on the horrific abuse that has (and probably still is) taken place, tempting as it is to recount some of the more salacious details. Here's the real problem for an organization that relies on people buying into lots of bizarre stuff in order exercise power over people's lives directly and indirectly. Just recall how the Catholic bishops in the US tried hard to kill health care reform in the US just a week ago, playing against the 'ethics' and 'morals' card. Remarkably that this bunch of discredited old men still dare to talk to us about morality. It is clear that senior management of the Church the world all over (and including the organization's CEO, its current Pope) have worked day and night to conceal the abuse and have worked day and night to protect its raping and beating staff from being prosecuted by the state. Says British human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, "In a 2001 edict to Catholic Bishops worldwide, the Pope ordered a cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy. He failed to ensure that priests who raped and sexually abused young people were reported to the police. This is why he is not welcome in the UK and why we object to him being honoured with a State Visit in September, especially a State Visit that is being funded by the taxpayer."

Makes you wonder, even if you hold the organization not in as much disdain as I do, why would the Church do this?

The answer, I think, is actually quite simple: Part of the Catholic fairy tale is that the Pope and his staff are representatives of God on earth. You know people us mere mortals are meant to look up to for guidance. Surely an omnipotent, omniscient and good God would not allow his own local reps to engage in such sort of perverted behaviors, especially not in such large numbers. At least that's what most sane people, believers and atheists, would have to wonder. It's one thing for them to say that God ain't interfering with what mere mortals are doing on earth, that he's given us autonomy to live our own lives and so on and so forth. Fair enough, but that surely doesn't explain why God's own reps engage in such reprehensible stuff and God does nothing. If, on the other hand God's reps are in those crucial respects no different to the rest of us, we have every reason to ask why we should trust their advice on matter ethics anymore than the next person in the street. I suspect actually that priests ARE more likely to engage in such aberrant sexual activities due to the celibacy related hypocrisy, but that's another story.

This then is the reason, I think, for why the Church has gone out of its way to keep the abuse under wraps, even if that meant to protect child abusing staff members from prosecution. Of course, this permitted many of the child abusers to continue their abuse for decades. It is clear then that the Church, in order to uphold the fiction of Gods reps on earth, did not hesitate to protect child abusing staff the world all over.

So, my advice to employees of the cult of misery: cease and desist to engage in any further attempts at influencing public policy in areas of reproductive health or any other matter. You are in no situation, credibly, to claim special moral insights and competence.

As to my fellow atheists out there: indeed, there is no God that's omniscient, omnipotent and good. Otherwise, no doubt, today's latest scandal in the ongoing saga would also not have happened. God would not have permitted a Roman Catholic priest to abuse 200 deaf boys sexually and get full cover from the church hierarchy (I do mean the Vatican). It is that simple.

The Week

It's difficult for me to pick my 'favourite' news item this week to blog about. Two stand out, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the latest news from spokespeople of the cult of misery as my good friend Russell Blackford likes to call the Roman Catholic Church. The study in the NEJM was mistaken by large media organisations to further substantiate the claim that folks diagnosed to be in persistent vegetative state (PVS) or minimally conscious state (MCS) actually are not in such states, but rather that they're fully conscious persons trapped in a completely unresponsive body. Researchers in Belgium and France measured brain reactions in 54 such people in both countries and discovered to their surprise that some of them had the same brain regions light up that did light up in the healthy control group. This does indeed suggest that there's a possibility that in those folks a functional brain capable of understanding and responding to questions is kind of stuck in an unresponsive body. That is scientifically truly interesting and deserves further research. However, it's worth noting that despite the media hype (and hype by 'pro-life' activists) of the 54 PVS participants only a 5 responded in the manner I have just described, and 'in three of these patients, additional bedside testing revealed some sign of awareness, but in the other two patients, no voluntary behavior could be detected by means of clinical assessment.' The researchers sadly failed to ask how these 'responsive' people felt about being stuck in an unresponsive body, whether they wanted to continue living, questions that have been for a long time central in ethical and policy debates about the proper treatment of people in such states.

Stan Terman, MD, PhD of Caring Advocates commented (sensibly): "The finding that while bedside behavioral testing detected NO awareness (the hallmark needed for the diagnosis of Permanent Vegetative State), a high tech scan (fMRI) allowed one patient (out of 23) [not 4] to answer five simple Yes-or-No questions such as, “Is your brother’s name Alex?” Sensational news reports claimed that technology allowed this patient “to communicate for the first time since [the accident].” This may be an overstatement in terms of what we mean by “communication.” While the authors intend to ask patients about pain in the future, they did not suggest posing the ultimate existential Yes-or-No question, “Do you want to live in this state?” Surveys indicate that most people answer “No,” but there are still some who may this limited finding as a reason to never give up hope. Family members of patients with severe disorders of consciousness, especially if they are people of faith may use this finding to bolster their argument to continue to provide aggressive medical care and tube feeding when physicians consider such medical treatment to be futile. In addition, powerful faith-based health organizations, that determine their institutions’ policies regarding refusal of medically administrated food and water, may cite this result from one patient to continue tube feeding, indefinitely. Yet there is something I do not hear: So far, no professional has proposed, based on the finding that fMRI could help NONE of the patients whose PVS resulted from loss of oxygen (as opposed to physical trauma), it is therefore now both morally and ethically correct to withdraw feeding tubes from those PVS patients. I suppose the news media would prefer to report findings as providing hope—that’s what people want to hear. Unfortunately, bolstering false hope could lead to an inappropriate allocation of scarce medical resources." Stay tuned for more to come on this issue. I suspect the debate is far from over!

Well, then there are my friends from the Roman Catholic Church. Reeling from - by now - substantial numbers of (sexual) abuse cases involving children in their care across the globe, the organisation is being hit with the same scandal in Germany, where the number of abuse cases has reached more than one hundred (and counting). Of course, this ain't really newsworthy, we're used by now to the fact that some of its celibate staff are anything but celibate, particularly so when kids are about. Since 1995 about 100 of them were investigated in the context of child abuse allegations in Germany alone. Quite a number! As usual senior management tried as long as possible to protect its staff from prosecution - while busy preaching to the rest of society what proper sex and morals are all about. It is this bit that annoys me ever more. I do not understand why anyone in this day and age would even bother listening to representatives of this organisation the moment they say 'ethics' or 'morality'. Routinely historical truth is being mutilated in the name of the ideological cause, when bishops declared at one point or other that the holocaust is abused as a propaganda instrument by Jewish people, and, of course, that abortion is akin to genocide (tell that to the folks who were slaughtered in Rwanda, for instance). Incidentally, Christians fanatics from a southern state of the USA have been on the road again, in good colonial style, to grab kids in third world countries. It looks like in Haiti a whole bunch of them will be prosecuted for kidnapping kids (whose parents and/or relatives are alive and kicking). The official version is that they planned to hand them over to adoptive parents in the USA. It goes without saying that it all was a misunderstanding now. I pray to the non-existing Gods that they will be sentenced and put in Haitian jails and won't be simply extradited to the USA. There got to be some justice in this world every now and then.

'God' motivated child abuse - on home 'schooling' and cancer care

Here is the story, some of which you might already have heard about: A 13 year old teenage boy in Minnesota, carefully brainwashed by his parents by means of 'God' enlightened home 'schooling', is diagnosed during a hospital visit with suffering from a form of cancer called Hodgkin's lymphoma. Just to be clear, 'God' here, for a change, isn't 'Jesus' or 'Allah' or Jehova', nope it's a fakeish American-Indian thingie called Nemenhah. That might make it more attractive to freewheeling hippies, but it's no less idiotic obviously. Thankfully, if diagnosed and treated in time, there's a very high likelihood that, with proper treatment - involving chemotherapy - the child patient would survive. The probability of successful medical care is in the vicinity of 85 to > 90%.

Well, the farm-based home-schooled child of God decides that it doesn't want chemotherapy anymore. The side-effects are unpleasant, and he saw his auntie die while on chemotherapy. The family seeks a second expert opinion that also confirms the high likelihood of success of chemotherapy. They kid won't have any of it (who cares about expert opinion when a teenage boy has strong views about cancer care, and he's duly supported (or coaxed into this) but his parents who believe in 'natural' remedies. A court thing ensues, as is wont in such cases, and the court orders the kid to be treated with allopathic medicines in order to preserve his life. This, of course, is perfectly fair enough, given the obvious child abuse that took place here. Comes Mom who grabs her boy and takes off to Mexico in search of further alternative cures. It's interesting how a combination of life-threatening illness and idiotic parents can actually kill children.

Some have argued that in this case perhaps religious belief shouldn't be criticised unduly, given that it might just be the pretext used by parents predisposed to using 'natural' remedies over mainstream medicine. I don't buy into this. In this case as well as others like it is very difficult to ascertain retrospectively what it is that existed first, belief in natural remedies as a result of religious conviction or religious belief leading to silly ideas about modern medicine. The point surely is that in both cases religious belief is central to the 'argument' rejecting life-preserving medical care.

Comes Mom and runs away with the son, reportedly to Mexico in order to find an alternative cure for the kid. Doctors confirm that time is running out for the kid, and that he's going to reach the point of no return any time soon. Invariably there has been discussion about religious freedom in this context. Frankly, I doubt it's about this, it's about parents clearly unable to make decisions that are in their child's objective best interest (it goes without saying probably, neither is the 13 year old teenager in question, seeing that he is already lacking any decent schooling). It does not matter whether their motive is a non-existent mainstream religion God or such a God's American-Indian alternative. It's irrelevant to a large extent - at this point in time - what motivates the parents and child. What is much more troublesome is that it could have got this far to begin with. The reassuring news is that in another case, where a mother prayed for her diabetic child instead of taking her to the hospital, she was found guilty of second degree reckless homicide.

Same old story, creating cohesive societies by promoting faith schools - secterianism in action

Quite incredibly so, from the UK to Canada to Australia and South Africa, in many countries the struggle to build cohesive societies continues. It all ranges from some kind of free-for-all multi-culti to lessons in 'localness' (eg Britishness as proposed a while ago by Gordon Brown, the current Prime Minister of the UK). I have supported in the past this idea not because I am a particularly strong nationalist (I'm not sure these days which nation would be 'mine' anyway). However, much is to be said in favour of aiming to ensure that recent migrants into the country at least have a clear understanding of what the basic values of their new country are, how its fundamental institutions function, and they should be taught (compulsorily, if need be) the predominant language of the place they chose to call their new home.

I am a strong supporter of public school education (as in publicly funded schools) precisely because they're any society's best shot at building a cohesive society (at least in the minds of kids going to school). Faith based schools, in that sense, are the last thing one would want to see. In a way, they constitute a form of child abuse as children are ideologically brainwashed while they're most susceptible to such influences. This harsh terminology I owe to Michael Selgelid, a good colleague of mine. He's right though. Everyone is entitled to choose any or no religion for themselves, but to permit proponents of such ideologies free access to children for extended periods of time, by means of their school education, is surely abusive at best. Tony Blair's city academies, for that reason along are terrible news. Surely segregation is fostered as opposed to reduced in societies following this path.

In Ontario the conservatives, fishing for the religious vote, promised to provide taxpayer's funds to faith based schools should the provincial voters elect them to office. Of course, this is in breach of a very important principle of modern democracy, that of the separation of state and church(es). Recent internet polls in Canada suggest that those against such measures are in the high 70% bracket, but the question is how reliable such polls are.

One of my colleagues, Professor James Miller, published this response to the conservative's proposal:

'John Tory deserves credit for tackling the problem of religious education in our public school system. But what our children desperately need is not religious education but rather education about religion. They need to become literate in the world's religions, and more aware of the beliefs, values and practices that shape contemporary Canada. To do so requires presenting these religions in a neutral light, something the public system, not religious schools, can best guarantee.' (Toronto Star)

Miller is right, of course. What is interesting is that precisely this rationale has been implemented in South Africa. Former education minister Kader Asmal (at one point a professor of education at Edinburgh University, no less) has introduced religious education in the standard curriculum of all public schools. Kids are not herded there thru the type of religious 'education' that I was subjected to in a Catholic primary school back in Germany (Catholic priest, yep, middle-aged guy in colourful dress, confession and singalongs included), rather they're informed about the history and content of the major religions. The result is that all children in the country end up having a better understanding of both their own religion as well as their friends' religion. They also are so enabled to make up their own mind as to which religion (or none) to adopt. In a liberal democracy providing public school education that is where the matter should end.

Good success to the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain

I like this! There's a newish organisation in the UK called the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. Basically they're people who were (as the name suggests) Muslims, and frankly they've had enough of the reactionary near-fascist organisations claiming to represent them. One wonders how long it will take for effigies of them to be burned in some odd place or other.

I am kind of tempted to set up my own little grouping of ex-catholics or ex-christians (but then, i never really believed that kind of fairtytale anyway - I mean, helloooo... a good, omniscient, all-powerful God who kinda doesn't think it's worthwhile interfering with his/her creation's activities like the holocaust in Germany, the genozide in Rwanda and the list goes on and on and on). Surely we are left either with a Leibnizian option of the kind that this is the best of all possible worlds, and things could only be worse if God hadn't created this paradise (Voltaire made rightfully a mockery of this view in his Candide), or we better accept that God (if he/she/it exists at all) is not omniscient and all-powerful, or we concede that may be, just may be God isn't 'good' after all. Either way, secularism seems the most sensible response to it all.

Here's the ex-Muslims' press release:

Manifesto of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain

We, non-believers, atheists, and ex-Muslims, are establishing or joining the
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain to insist that no one be pigeonholed as
Muslims with culturally relative rights nor deemed to be represented by
regressive Islamic organisations and 'Muslim community leaders'.

Those of us who have come forward with our names and photographs represent
countless others who are unable or unwilling to do so because of the threats
faced by those considered 'apostates' - punishable by death in countries
under Islamic law. By doing so, we are breaking the taboo that comes with
renouncing Islam but also taking a stand for reason, universal rights and
values, and secularism.

Whilst religion or the lack thereof is a private affair, the increasing
intervention of and devastation caused by religion, and particularly Islam,
in contemporary society has necessitated our public renunciation and
declaration. We represent a majority in Europe and a vast secular and
humanist protest movement in countries like Iran.

Taking the lead from the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, we
demand:

1. Universal rights and equal citizenship for all. We are opposed to
cultural relativism and the tolerance of inhuman beliefs, discrimination and
abuse in the name of respecting religion or culture.

2. Freedom to criticise religion. Prohibition of restrictions on
unconditional freedom of criticism and expression using so-called religious
'sanctities'.

3. Freedom of religion and atheism.

4. Separation of religion from the state and legal and educational system.

5. Prohibition of religious customs, rules, ceremonies or activities that
are incompatible with or infringe people's rights and freedoms.

6. Abolition of all restrictive and repressive cultural and religious
customs which hinder and contradict woman's independence, free will and
equality. Prohibition of segregation of sexes.

7. Prohibition of interference by any authority, family members or
relatives, or official authorities, in the private lives of women and men
and their personal, emotional and sexual relationships and sexuality.

8. Protection of children from manipulation and abuse by religion and
religious institutions.

9. Prohibition of any kind of financial, material or moral support by the
state or state institutions to religion and religious activities and
institutions.

10. Prohibition of all forms of religious intimidation and threats.

Here's a report from the event and a link to a speech given by one of the group's founders.