A couple in Oregon City, the Wylands, has been charged with first degree criminal mistreatment for refusing to treat a growing mass on their 7-month old daughter’s face. The mass of blood vessels is called a hemangioma and may end up causing blindness in their daughter’s left eye. A quick online search revealed that hemangioma is easily treatable by either using steroid or surgically removing the growing mass. Why would parents refuse medical care to their child? Don’t all parents want the best for their kids?
Unfortunately for their daughter the Wylands are member of the Church of the Followers of Jesus Christ. A small community who relies solely on God and refuse secular medicine. They have been in the news before, and have a grim track record of infants and children deaths.
A series by the Oregonian newspaper announced that of 78 minors buried in the graveyard over 35 years, 21 “probably would have lived with medical intervention, often as simple as antibiotics.” ~ Time Magazine
Being a parent is no easy task and some people may be better at it than others, but refusing to take one’s sick child to the doctor defies common sense. If adults want to pray and cover themselves in oil to cure cancer, that is their prerogative, but children cannot defend themselves from their deluded parents. Drug addicts and criminals have their children placed in foster care by social services; yet playing the religious card has enabled some of these people to get away with criminal acts which would otherwise be prosecuted. This is simply reprehensible, people are free to believe as they please but when the welfare of a child is a stake, society has to draw the line.
The life of a child should trump religious freedom. Shouldn’t it?
Jeff Randall
Sarah Hippolitus
Brian Gregory
Luis Reinoso
Matthieu Guibert
I agree. Neglecting your child’s health is sickening. It would be different if the mother or father had the growth on their face and they wanted to rely on God to heal them. The child, however, most likely doesn’t have such a strong belief that the God her mother and father pray to will be able to help her. When something like this is going on, somebody should go to the police and they should lawfully be able to write a ticket to the parents for being complete morons.
I’d add that even if the child HAD such a “strong belief” (or claimed to), the child does not have the experience, knowledge, wisdom to make such a decision for them self….