Hi,Just a quickie today.
In our increasingly fundamentalist times belief and science are locking horns on a regular basis.
A news story I read today reinforced this battle. With parents who practice faith healing being prosecuted for their actions contributing in a major way to the death or their daughter.
Faith healing has been shown to work in some cases, and has definately helped people gain the will to recover from major illnesses. However there is no clear, and repeatable, evidence of this kind of healing working with a high percentage of success.
Whereas medical diabetes treatments are working all the time, every day, for millions of people worldwide.
So are these people short sighted and blind in their faith? Or is society to blame for not allowing people to treat their own families illnesses in their own way?
All I know is that one girl would probably be alive today if they had room in their belief structure for Doctors.
As a parent I'm going to give them a score of 0 out of 10 for parenting and leave it at that.
NP out
3 comments:
It'd be hard to draw the line at what you're allowed to believe in before it counts as being destructive to your child's health.
"Faith healing has been shown to work in some cases, "???
Shown to work means repeatable evidence. If there isn't any, then it can't be "shown to work".
You've just redefined what "shown to work" actually means!
Every case ever studied where faith healing was involved goes like this, "With the help of prayer and chemotherapy, we've managed to beat this cancer."
Now now don't make me slap you Mr D.
There are a few good studies, and medical journals / books, out there which cover the affect of prayer on helping people to recover from illness - e.g.
- Intercessory prayer paper by cardiologist Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital
- 1994 book, Healing Words, Larry Dossey, M.D. a good read
There are even studies done about how prayer and visualisation can strengthen the immune system so you don't get sick in the first place.
Just because you haven't read it doesn't mean its not there...
I'm personally on the side of positive thinking does aid physical well being. Prayer is just an example of this kind of thinking.
NP
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