You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2013.
Ah yes, purveyors of Woo this is your fault. This isn’t Big Pharma, this isn’t biased studies, or any of the mendacity that you preach – the death of this child is squarely and completely on you. The CBC reports:
“Criminal charges are pending against a Calgary mother who police allege relied on holistic treatments instead of getting medical help for her seven-year-old son’s strep infection.”
Holistic treatments to treat a bacterial infection? Are you frakking kidding me – how much nonsense did the woo pedlars have to feed this parent to make her eschew effective medical treatment and treat her son with fucking potions and positive energy?
“On the morning of March 2, emergency crews were called to a 17th Avenue S.W. basement suite where a young boy was having a seizure. He was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.”
“An autopsy found the cause of death was a strep infection, which would have been treatable with penicillin.”
What a way to go – from the CDC on strep infection…
“Severe, sometimes life-threatening, GAS disease may occur when bacteria get into parts of the body where bacteria usually are not found, such as the blood, muscle, or the lungs. These infections are termed “invasive GAS disease.” Two of the most severe, but least common, forms of invasive GAS disease are necrotizing fasciitis and Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome. Necrotizing fasciitis (occasionally described by the media as “the flesh-eating bacteria”) destroys muscles, fat, and skin tissue. Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS), causes blood pressure to drop rapidly and organs (e.g., kidney, liver, lungs) to fail. STSS is not the same as the “toxic shock syndrome” frequently associated with tampon usage. About 20% of patients with necrotizing fasciitis and more than half with STSS die. About 10%-15% of patients with other forms of invasive group A streptococcal disease die.”
Speculation here, but the boy’s organs were being destroyed by the bacteria, he most likely was in severe pain for 10 days.
“Police allege the mother did not take the boy for treatment, giving him holistic remedies instead.”
Holistic fucking remedies? This is why alternative medicine is so dangerous, people die because they believe in weapons-grade bullshit.
“The treatment rendered at home was homeopathic in nature. This would include herbal remedies. The mother refused to take the child to a medical professional. No excuse given — just her belief system,” said Staff Sgt. Mark Cavilla.”
Her belief system? Believing in stupid shit gets people killed(bonus points if you can draw a parallel to religious belief). Holistic alternative medicine ranks high on the list of stupid shit to believe in.
“The boy was bedridden for 10 days prior to his death, police allege. Charges are pending against his 44-year-old mother. Those charges include criminal negligence causing death and failing to provide the necessaries of life.”
I’m waiting for the proud Alternative Medicine Community to stand up and own this child’s death, for teaching a mother not to trust evidence based medicine, for letting a child suffer for 10 days with a curable affliction.
I know what response we’ll get from these charlatans. Frakking Crickets.
A frequent dodge to avoid actually thinking about the issue criticism I have to deal with is that, as an anti-theist, I unfairly target Christianity and/or Islam. Why don’t I go around completely dismantling the vile B.S of other religions? Are their supernatural beliefs not just as irrational? Yes. Are their woo filled tenets not just as useless for understanding the reality which we inhabit? Yes. Is their presence not just as harmful to our society? No, no it isn’t.
And let me explain why.
We don’t have Zeus worshippers powerfully lobbying for science classes to ‘teach the controversy’ about the origin of lightning bolts. We don’t have Anubis acolytes “honour” killing wives and children. Christianity and Islam deserve every ounce of disrespect, ridicule, loathing we can throw at them because of the horrendous effects they have on individuals and society as a whole. I’ve always maintained that should any other ludicrous belief system result in such disastrous transgressions, I would criticize them with the same level of harshness. It wasn’t a challenge to be accepted, but here we are.
Catholicism, it turns out, does not have a monopoly on systematic child rape. Much less in the public eye, hiding under-the-radar, Judaism has its own truly awful institutionalized sexual abuse problem. Much like the worst stories from the Catholics, the inhuman perpetrators are shielded and go uncharged, people who speak out are severely punished, and kids are left to the predators. As reported in this article, Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg walked in on one such rape in a mikvah, a Jewish bath. When he tried to stop it, the rapist beat the protesting rabbi with a back scrubber for interrupting him.
Since then, Rosenberg has gone on to start up support systems for abused children and has spoken out against the rampant sexual abuse. For his efforts in trying to protect children, he receives death threats, is slandered in Hebrew newspapers, and is turned away from synagogues. He’s also had a cup of bleach thrown in his face.
Other inhuman lowlights mentioned in the article include:
- Stat: 50% or more of young males in Brooklyn’s massive Hasidic community have suffered from sexual abuse at the hands of their religious elders.
- Those speaking out against the problem face complete ruination
- Mothers who try to protect their children have them taken away
- Parents are afraid to complain to authorities on behalf of their children
- One of the worst offending Rabbis forced children to eat fecal matter in order to “purify” them
I can’t even process how a community can protect the vile scum that is raping their children while attacking the one of their number who’s trying to stand up for those kids. Once again, religion’s capacity to propagate incomprehensible evil in the world blows my mind. So fuck religious tolerance; fuck christianity, islam, AND judaism; fuck apologists defending rapists, but in the name of all that is good,
STOP FUCKING CHILDREN!
We, as a species have had the capacity to end ourselves quite completely since the late 1940’s. We often have our greatest minds working highly creative ways of ending human life. What bothers me the most about this quick video is the amount of ingenuity necessary to bring these designs from the blackboard to reality and then to mass production. Imagine if we could harness this impulse for technology and innovation that saves peoples lives instead of ending them
Bill Moyers introduces a film that I, very much, want to see. Watch as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony travels the globe and what it means to people and societies.
I think Rick might have a point. What sort of person would continue to vote for Mayor with Mr.Ford’s reputation? It is quite beyond my reckoning.
Some inspirational words from the 2013 Feminism in London Conference, the speaker was Finn Mackay – see the whole speech here.
Let us be clear. It is not feminism that turns women into victims. It is the men who choose to abuse women, who choose to violate women, who presume a right to buy women. It is those men who make women into victims; not feminism. Feminism is here to stop that process, to end the violence of male domination. We respond to individual experiences with the aim of collective change for all. That is what empowerment looks like.
It is not pessimistic or negative to name our oppression. It is liberating. Ours is a movement of billions of women, which says: no, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t because of what you were wearing, it wasn’t because of who you dated, it wasn’t because of how much you had been drinking, it wasn’t because of how late you walked home. Ours is also a movement which feels every loss, we feel every indignity, we feel every assault – because this is about you, and also because this goes beyond you; because this is about all of us. It is about every woman made to feel that she wasn’t worth as much as a man; every woman made to hate her body; every woman made to question and judge herself simply due to her sex alone; every woman denied opportunities or directed away from them; every woman made to feel she was lesser, second class.
What we all share as women, despite our vast diversity is our experiences of sexism in a world of male supremacy. What we should also share, but too often don’t, is our involvement in a collective movement of resistance to that oppression.
Homophobia, misogyny and a lack of faith are what hold women back from identifying with one of the oldest and most powerful social movements the world has ever known – their own. It is up to all of us to challenge that misogyny, to restore the faith in our personhood, our own potential, our own humanity.
For what is shameful about social justice, what is embarrassing about dignity and worth, what is wrong with demanding a stake in the world we have built? Feminism is only frightening to those who gain the most from oppression, to those who would stifle the human spirit and hold the world in stasis. The rest of us really do have nothing to lose and everything to gain; a revolution still to finish, and a world to win.
Here at DWR, there is a room for almost any topic. With that in mind today we are taking on the important question of what sort of rectal emission is most noxious and can we correlate the odoriferous emissions in question with the amount of sound generated. Yes folks, science once again has the answer.
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