11-year-old dies because parents refused medical treatment, going instead with prayer
March 26, 2008 — L. Ron BrownCan we please stop the madness?
Fox News reports that 11-year-old Madeline Neumann of Weston, Wisconsin has died of a treatable form of diabetes. Why? Because her parents denied her medical treatment, going instead with prayer. This is absolute lunacy. This is worse than faith-based child abuse. Another child has died because her deluded parents felt it a better idea to put their trust in an imaginary dictator than to go with the professionals, who are known to be able to effectively treat their daughter’s condition.
The article reports that Neumann had progressively gotten sicker and sicker until she died. The autopsy determined that she died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin. She had probably been ill for approximately 30 days, enduring symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.
What was the girls’ parents’ explanation of the death? According to police chief Dan Vergin, Dale and Leilani Neumann attributed the death to the parents not having enough faith. I’m sorry, but no. They have it 100% backwards. She died because they had way too much faith. Well, too much faith and too dangerous an interpretation of their favourite mythology.
The parents believed that the key to healing their daughter was to keep on praying and get more and more people to help pray. For the rational individual this reasoning is ridiculous. Zero is zero. Zero multiplied by some factor is still zero. No matter how many people you get praying, you’re still accomplishing nothing. In fact, in a way you’re accomplishing less than nothing, as every second a person spends doing nothing (i.e., praying) is a second they could have spent doing something (e.g., CALLING A DOCTOR!).
But wait! This may not be over! Doctor Mom believes that the girl still could be resurrected. Well halellujah! Don’t anybody call the Neumanns, they’re busy having a crash prayer session, you can be assured.
When I first heard of this story, I figured the family were either Christian Scientists or Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to the police chief, they do not attend an organized church or participate in an organized religion. Rather, they have a small Bible study of a few people.
The girl was not an only child. She has three siblings ranging in age from 13 to 16. These children are being left with the family. The police chief said that there are no signs of abuse, and hence no reason to remove them.
In a secular nation which presumably aspires toward some degree of sanity, should a family that has just knowingly allowed their child to die in the name of their religion be deemed fit parents? Even if none of their other children acquire a potentially dangerous affliction, at minimum these parents will be teaching their children that prayer is the answer and medicine is not. This sort of teaching puts these children and the children of these children at significant unnecessary risk.
Hat Tip: Mark Robinson of the Humanist Globe
March 26, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Just un-bleeping-believable! I’m so furious that this goes on in our society and that you can use religion as an excuse for behavior that should be considered criminal.
I am all for freedom of religion and beliefs, however the protection of the children in our society needs to be a priority. You are correct in that leaving the rest of the children with these parents poses a danger, not only to their physical safety, but to their mental safety. These children are right now being brain washed that prayer is going to solve any problem they will ever face.
There should be criminal consequences for the parents and the children removed from the home. Why is it we need to get a license to drive a car or to go fishing or to own a pet? Yet we need no qualifications or proof of responsibility when we have children? Something is upside down about how society places a higher value on the freedom of adults, over the value of the safety of children.
March 26, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Absolutely. This is child abuse, pure and simple - the parents should not just be losing their kids, they should be standing trial for manslaughter.
March 27, 2008 at 6:38 am
This is not as rare, or as remarkable, as it should be. Every several years, I encounter an article about parents who pray an insulin-dependent child to death. The almost acceptable sort of faith-based ignorance that this kind of event is grounded upon warrants vigorous prosecution. Notwithstanding the First Amendment, I would be pleased to see public schools teaching methods of thought that could render persons less susceptible to such nonsense.
March 27, 2008 at 7:29 am
This is completely unacceptable!!! As the mother of a wonderful Type 1 Juvenile Diabetic daughter, there IS NO REASON why Madeline Neumann, had to suffer for even 1 second of her life. Her parents directly caused her suffering due to their blatent ignorance.
“In the name of religion” or rather “hiding behind religion” is NEVER an excuse.
I am outraged and deeply saddened by what society has deemed acceptable parental behaviour.
May we never have even one drop of ignorance when it comes to another human being’s precious life.
March 27, 2008 at 10:32 am
Question:
When this happens to people integrated with society there is an outcry (as there should be) but in the Amish community these crimes would go unnoticed. Who is speaking for the these people? There is no media in Amish communities to report child abuse like this, so who is representing their voiceless and unnoticed?
March 27, 2008 at 11:05 am
Juanito:
I had never even considered Amish communities in this regard. As for your question, I have no idea.
March 27, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Are the parents facing any legal charges?
Overall this is one sad case. Couldn’t the courts have stepped in to look out for this child’s well-being? It seems to me that if claiming “religion” gets these sick people off the hook for essentially killing their daughter, then anyone could claim “religion” in any situation and not face any consequences.
Just my opinion.
March 27, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Derek:
To my understanding, they’re not facing charges.
I’m thinking that the special treatment to religion in this case is strongly influenced by the combination of lack of malice, passivity (rather than active killing), and the idea of parental entitlement to make decisions concerning their kids. Obviously, people wouldn’t be able to play the faith card for stoning a woman to death on her father’s doorstep for not being a virgin on her wedding night, or for killing an apostate (well, they could get away with this in certain parts of the Islamic world….).
March 27, 2008 at 5:55 pm
These people should be facing murder charges. I’m sorry, but their actions go beyond simply manslaughter. They knew that their child had a treatable disease, but they chose to do nothing. They sat there for at least 30 days and watched her dying literally in front of their eyes, and did nothing. They knowingly and willingly let her die for absolutely no reason.
These people had the audacity to actually say that they never expected her to die during prayer. What the hell did they expect? Well, apparently the mother thinks that the kid can be resurrected. But, seriously!! What did they expect? Did they expect her to jump up and proclaim that she was magically cured? Please!!
There is no excuse and no defense that could ever justify what they did. They essentially murdered their child, and they deserve to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And while people are at it, the other kids need to be removed from the home. If this wasn’t a clear case of abuse, I don’t know what is!!
March 27, 2008 at 7:33 pm
As I understand it, allowing someone to die through your inaction is the definition of manslaughter, while murder requires that you actively seek to bring about the death. So, letting someone drown is manslaughter - holding them under is murder. I could be wrong about this though - I’m no lawyer.
March 27, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Well okay, under the law it would be manslaughter. If they’re charged with manslaughter it had better be voluntary manslaughter because they knowingly and willfully let their daughter die by not getting her medical attention. They may not have known that she had diabetes. But they knew she was sick, and they did nothing!! They are beyond negligent here.
I, for one, have zero sympathy for them. The only people that I feel sorry for are that little girl, the relative who tried to check on her welfare, and her siblings because she’s dead and they’re left with parents who did nothing to save their sister.
March 28, 2008 at 10:10 am
I’m certainly glad that humanists aren’t allowed to make laws by pure moral subjectivity.
March 28, 2008 at 11:27 am
Bread and Sham:
First off, moral subjectivism is not a necessity of humanism any more than pretend moral objectivism is a product of religion. The Golden Rule is a good idea, regardless of where it came from. And we can establish rules based on principles such as the golden rule and considerations of what sort of society would develop if certain things were allowed (e.g., Would a society of chaos or fear result? That would be bad. Are we preventing someone from living a life that they want to live simply because we find it offensive? Would we like it if someone did that to us?).
Secondly, I think it’s bullshit that we have deluded religious people who think that their views on morality are somehow at a higher level than those who they *admit* are the concoction of humanity.
Humanism does not necessitate moral subjectivity any more than religion entails pretend moral objectivism.
March 28, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I agree that this is a delusional and moronic action by the parents. But I also wonder why such a hardcore religious belief precludes the use of medicine. With some Amish, at least their beliefs permeate their whole lives and show some consistency: no electricity, phones, cars, modern medicine, etc. Was that the case with these people? If not, why would they think God would allow such technological advancements as microwaves, electricity and automobiles but not medicine? And furthermore, if God is omnipotent and all-knowing and controls the fate of people, wouldn’t He have had His hand in advancing modern medicine for us to use? I imagine thinking isn’t a priority for such zealots.
March 28, 2008 at 7:31 pm
The real problem is that the exact same thing goes on at a much larger scale. Much of the willingness of Christians to ignore major problems like global warming, overpopulation, vanishing natural resources, and so forth is their steadfast belief that god will look after them as long as they pray. This belief is held even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, and gives them license to completely ignore any problem, no matter how dangerous.
They are a danger to themselves and others, and probably deserve their own page in the DSM IV. The fact that they don’t get one is solely a result of the special treatment given to religion.
March 29, 2008 at 12:49 am
http://stevenspoint.com/police/sexoffenders/daleneumann.html
March 29, 2008 at 7:46 pm
While these people have obviously made an extremely bad choice and have cost their daughter her life, this article has so many things wrong with it, as do many of you in your responses to it. I know it doesn’t do any good to say so, but I’m sure there are many facts left out, and obviously the whole story was completely biased and accusatory, even stooping to make fun of Christianity as a whole based on this one set of events.
For this to happen is terrible, and these people probably should not have children, but I assure you, very few Christians make life decisions like this based completely on faith… Christians are not idiots, whatever you may think. Although not everything about the religion can be proven, neither can it be disproved… and many intelligent people still have faith. There are many valuable arguments explaining that, but that’s beside the point.
I do agree that anyone who blindly trusts God to handle their (and the world’s) problems, is sadly misled, never in the Bible (to my knowledge) does it instruct anyone to do so… in fact the opposite “God helps those who help themselves”. Prayer is not meant to be the sole action taken to solve a situation… neither is prayer pointless as mentioned in the passage above. I love debate so bring it on. I realize this comment is just a bit random and maybe contradictory, but I’m in a hurry so I don’t have time to try harder.
March 29, 2008 at 8:07 pm
While I don’t excuse their actions I believe that their belief that God would heal Madeline was accurate. I say this because I believe that God will heal as well. The difference between me and them is that I know God uses others to carry out His healing. It’s unfortunate that they misinterpreted the Bible because the result is the death of their beautiful daughter.
March 29, 2008 at 8:55 pm
“Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, it shall be forgiven him.” (James 5:14-15 ASV)
Christian literalists are committed to the truth of this passage. Think about that for a moment. If you believe in the literal inerrancy of the bible, then you believe that this verse is completely accurate, more valid than medical science. You are committed to that belief, and to ignore it would be to turn your back on your faith. It is precisely christianity and faith in the bible that has killed this child.
The fact that some christians are not sincere enough in their faith to leave the healing up to god is not a defense of christianity. It just tells us that some people have enough brains to set aside faith and trust facts when dealing with important stuff. But get it straight, if you don’t believe that god will heal you when you’re prayed over, you believe the bible lies.
It’s true that I can’t disprove the existence of god. But I also can’t disprove the existence of unicorns, pixies, two headed crocodile demons, or winged foxes. Why is it that a person with faith in god is defended, but a person with faith in any of those other things (all of which are more plausible than god) is ridiculed?
Faith is just wishful thinking with a flashy paintjob.
March 30, 2008 at 2:19 am
i agree with most that say that these parents acted irresponsibly… what is wrong with having faith AND seeking medical attention when needed! i’m sorry but not allowing people to help your sick child is just… wrong!!!
March 31, 2008 at 12:48 pm
scary, scary. I think this was handled entirely too wrong. Wrong once by the parents for believing in prayer over medicine. did they ever think maybe gods way of helping her was by providing people who could?
And wrong by the police in believing the same absolute lunacy that the parents have done nothing wrong. But I guess two wrongs = one right now?
April 3, 2008 at 11:19 am
My eleven year old niece has Type 1 Diabetes - she is strong, healthy, beautiful and bright. She also injects insulin 4 times a day and watches her diet. We pray for a cure , but rejoice in the treatment and dedicated Doctors available to us.
This poor girl died a painful death. This is not child abuse, it’s murder.
April 4, 2008 at 4:13 pm
L.R.B:
You wrote: “Humanism does not necessitate moral subjectivity any more than religion entails pretend moral objectivism.”
Most of the discussion happening here is about how criminal the Neumanns are. I’m in full agreement that they made a tragic misrepresentation of their faith, since there are numerous examples in Scripture where faith is paired up with action for results different from that of faith alone. However, the name-calling is coming from narrow and limited perspectives.
Christianity, or any faith that recognized the Bible as authoritative, is by definition, objective. Therefore, it necessitates objectivity.
Secondly, humanism by definition places faith within the individual as autonomous and independent of any outside source. Therefore, humanism necessitates relativity. Your well trained in psychology. This should not be a foreign concept to you.
April 4, 2008 at 6:46 pm
As I have already said, the Neumanns did not misrepresent their faith - the bible explicitly claims that god will heal any illness in response to prayer and anointment with oil.
And humanists are in no way required to accept moral relativism. They are only required to ground their morality in something human. Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Rousseau, and a variety of others have put forward humanistic theories of morality which ground it in a variety of places other than a divine will. And that’s just off the top of my head.
Gods and holy books are not a solution to immorality, they are an invitation for weird, idiosyncratic, and ultimately self serving moral codes to be grounded in the vague, arbitrary writings that have been repeatedly mistranslated and reinterpreted in the light of prevailing political and economic interests.
April 8, 2008 at 4:36 pm
BadBoy Bill gave a website: stevenspoint.com/police/sexoffenders/daleneumann…anyway, this man is NOT Kara’s father (I knew her parents a while before she was even born), and this is not the same person. Dale is a loving husband and father who made a grave mistake not knowing Kara was deathly ill, not this sex offender who you have listed. Get your facts straight before listing stuff you know nothing about…these parents are suffering and have to live with Kara’s death for the rest of their lives!
April 8, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Who is Kara?
I think you have the wrong Neumann in mind here.
April 9, 2008 at 7:20 am
“According to the police chief, they do not attend an organized church or participate in an organized religion. Rather, they have a small Bible study of a few people”.
~~~~~~Why is Christianity being blamed? Just because a person subscribes to “faith” of some sort, does not automatically deem them a “Christian”. They believed in “Spooky” Religion. The extremist kind that gives every religion a bad name. I believe in prayer. I do. I pray. I also pray to a God who gives us many tools and several rules. One is called Medicine. Another is Common Sense. Another is a commandment not to commit murder then dare claim “faith” or hide behind His name to justify it. That’s crap. Their daughter died because the parents have poor mentality. This is the epitomy of a senseless death due to neglect and nothing more.
April 9, 2008 at 7:30 am
It doesn’t take 30 days to figure out someone, especially a child needs medical attention when they are suffering with diabetes…even if you don’t know its diabetes! Unless that person is a complete moron, that person ought to know it’s SOMETHING! It doesn’t matter who the father is, that child did not get the medical attention she needed. Period. Who lets their child suffer that long before getting professional help!? Please! I am up to my eyeballs with defenseless children being neglected, mistreated, abused and murdered by caregivers of any title all because the very ones who are supposed to protect them simply don’t. That is not proper parenting. Biological or not. Faith or none. Heck, atheist have physicians. The parents need their heads examined.
April 9, 2008 at 9:58 am
Neophyte:
Why is Christianity being blamed? I’d say that what is blamed is really 1) the parents, and 2) the social convention of giving way too much respect to religious beliefs. We can agree on 1, so I’ll not talk about it. As for 2, if our society wasn’t so handcuffed by its committed to respect religious belief and practices this probably would not have happened, and if it did, these parents would have had their remaining children taken away from them, would have been put on trial, and would have served as an example to every other pair of parents may have acted similarly in the future.
I’ve said it before: respect for religious beliefs is really a matter of democratic bullying. If only a few people believe in a particular creation and moral mythology, there is no pressure within society to respect (or, rather, submit to) these beliefs. However, if the community of believers grows and develops a lobby, the rest of society is lobbied into pretending that these beliefs are now somehow more respectable than they were when there were fewer believers. If when there were only a handful of believers something like the Neumann situation had happened, people probably woulda treated the incident as prove positive that this is a dangerous cult. The parents would have had their children removed, possibly had jail time, and so on and on. If there was only a single parent and he/she did to their kid what the Neumann’s did to Madeleine because of a parallel belief that they held alone, society would have deemed the parent to be mentally unfit to take care of a child and probably them self and probably would have been committed to a psychiatric care facility for some period of time and then eventually let out, but with a short-leash and monitoring.
April 25, 2008 at 10:05 am
Prosecutors and police might soon provide answers on the fate of a town of Weston couple whose 11-year-old child died after they chose prayer instead of medical attention.
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080423/WDH0101/804230710
April 30, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Have these people ever heard or read their bibles. God doesn’t help those that don’t help themselves. I know that and I’m not religious, and don’t tell me the bible doesn’t say this. When David killed Goliath he acted for himself by faith in God. He didn’t just stand there like a stump and let God do everything. Holy people never cease to amaze me on how truly stupid and incompetent they can be. I think they should follow the bible on this one; eye for an eye. Give them the chair.