A couple days ago on the way to Vista in the morning I was listening to the Bobby Bones show as usual. Often they talk about recent events and they were discussing the case of a thirteen year old boy with cancer. What makes the case controversial and discussion worthy is that the parents refuse to take the boy to a doctor, defending religious cockamania and a health creed woefully summed as "no toxins in the body" i.e. no chemotherapy. Poor poor poor child. No person should suffer the misfortune of insane, delusional parents.

A particular problem I take issue with, however, is the call-in responses of the lay people. Essentially everyone expressed this opinion: "Of course, me, personally, I would take my son to the doctor. But if it is part of their religion that they don't take people to doctors, and practice faith healing, then I don't think it is right to tell them what to believe [and therefore what to do]." Herein lies the precise apologetic, unwarranted respectful attitude accorded to religious belief that the four horsemen abhor and urge us to abhor as well. If all the call ins say that they, personally, would take their child to the doctor the message is that we live in a country where citizens agree to take sick children to the doctor and clearly the parents of the sick boy are extremely marginalized individuals.

To protect such action by deference to religious belief is inexcusable. Where does one draw the line? Should my religion of wanton axe murdering be accorded such deference? No? Because people die ghastly deaths against their will and we are by social contract an anti-murder society? Will the death of this thirteen year old boy (mom now fleeing with boy against court order and law) be anything but ghastly and against his will? Why then the deference? The results are the same. Someone will charge that one is an act of commission and the other an act of omission; acts of commission are held more morally reprehensible than acts of omission, and with good explanation and reason. In this case, however, the crazy, faith-rooted mother blatantly denied the providence of a simple, readily available, life-saving solution. This strikes me as commissional. Just as a parent cannot axe a child to death, a parent should not effortfully strive to deny life-saving treatment to a child, in the name of anything, much less religious insanity. The boy undoubtedly has a limited and distorted perspective on his options and the implication of his mother's beliefs. Therein lies true destruction and for people to accord such lofty deference in the name of belief, with these terrible results, is despair.

Of course, if the boy was not a boy and a man of around twenty years or older then I would support his decision to act as stupidly as his desire will lead him. Adults should have the freedom to harm themselves if they so choose. But because his incompetent parents are making the decision for him and because of his position as an ignorant child I would consent to the prevailing authority of the medical field and the government.