National: In Seattle a judge ruled that it was a fourteen-year-old Jehovah’s Witness boy’s right to refuse a blood transfusion, on the basis of religion and the transfusion would have made the boy “unclean”. Dennis Lindberg was sick with Leukemia and died several hours later. The judge knew the boy was likely “giving himself a death sentence”, but denied a state motion to force a blood transfusion on the boy. The boy’s parents, who did not have custody, flew to the hearing and felt that the boy’s guardian, his aunt, may have influenced the decision. However, after meeting with the boy the father decided not to appeal. Doctors gave the boy a 70% chance of surviving five more years if he had received the transfusion.
Opinion: This is a really sad story, and I’m sure it’d be even sadder if more details had been given. However, I think the right ruling was made and that it was the boy’s decision to not receive a transfusion. All the transfusion would have done is slow down the inevitable, and I feel in a case like this, the boys religious convictions were justified if he didn’t want to unnaturally prolong his own life. However, it does bother me that other people might be able to seek untimely deaths on the basis of religion, or that other children of Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose lives might be extended to a greater degree, might die from not getting proper medical treatment.
National: So Pope Benedict XVI is coming to visit! He’ll be visiting The White House, Ground Zero, and the UN. He’ll be holding two public masses: one at the new National Stadium in Washington on April 17, and another at Yankee Stadium on April 20. Besides that and meeting with Catholic leaders, he won’t be traveling much though.
Opinion: I really like this guy’s clothes, but wasn’t Jesus supposed to come back when he became pope? I’d like to know more about this guy, and it’d be pretty cool to get to see him.
International: So there’s good news and bad news. Good: Venezuelans aren’t precisely happy about President Hugo Chavez’s referendum to get rid of term limits and his plans to set up a Communist regime.
There have been many protests, occasionally leading to clashes, but not too much violence.
Bad: One protest did lead to a confrontation between protestors and the Venezuelan National Guard. Plus, if you’re communist, it’s too bad that people don’t want to just hand all the power to Chavez and pass new communal property laws.
Opinion: what I’ve always wondered about communism is what sorts of personal property are people allowed to own? Is it just not land? Anyhow, I suppose this is an encouraging state of affairs, and maybe someone better will replace Chavez in the near future. What confuses me is that I though Venezuela was already Communist.
International: In North Korea, public executions are increasing. For example, in recent days, a factory chief accused of making international phone calls was executed by firing squad in a stadium in front of 150,000 people. Six people were trampled to death and thirty-four others were injured by a stampede of people exiting the stadium. Cell phones and international calls are banned entirely in North Korea.
Opinion: I didn’t really realize the severity of the restrictions on the freedom of speech in North Korea. This is an awful story, but I knew that North Korea is accused of being one of the top human rights violators. Of course they deny violating human rights and say the executions are meant to deter crime.
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3 comments:
Very sad story when religion prevents medical treatment.
Government owns most all land.
N. K. is scary.
Regarding Dennis:
The death of a young person is always tragic, no question about it. You can be sure he would have far rather lived. Yet people routinely put their lives on the line for any number of causes, and they are generally lauded as heroes for it, not deluded nuts. Which are they? Take the one who “gives his life for his country,” for example. Only some of that person’s own countrymen will think his death noble. Everyone else will conclude he died in vain.
The lad suffered from leukemia. Nobody imagined they could cure him. Instead doctors thought he would likely (70% chance) survive at least for the next 5 years with their regimen which included transfusions. The courageous youngster was assessed by a judge who interviewed the parents, his aunt (who had custody), social workers and the boy's doctor. “I don't believe Dennis' decision is the result of any coercion,” the judge stated. “He is mature and understands the consequences of his decision."
Being of the same faith and familiar with his mindset, I can identify with his thinking. He would not want to be portrayed as a fanatic nor the victim of fanatics. (The boy’s father states "My sister has done a good job of raising him for the past four years,” though he feels she imposed her religious beliefs on him. The facts speak otherwise. Dennis had made he beliefs his own.
Don't more youngsters die each year in high school sports than in refusing transfusions? Each year I read a few local examples of the former. I'm not sure I would know any of the latter were it not for news media relaying any such event around the globe. Does anyone think high school sports should be banned or it's coaches judged accessories to "negligent homicide,” as some bloggers thought would be appropriate for those who may have contributed to Dennis' mindset? Witness youngsters finding themselves in Dennis predicament are proportionately no more than aforementioned victims of sports.
But one also must address the assumption, never challenged in the media, that rejecting a transfusion is tantamount to suicide. (The judge stated that "I don't think Dennis is trying to commit suicide. This isn't something Dennis just came upon, and he believes with the transfusion he would be unclean and unworthy.") How often does one read the noun “blood transfusion” not proceeded by the adjective “life-saving?” The facts suggest the label is not especially fitting.
For example, Surgeon Bruce Spiess addresses the Australian and New Zealand College of Anesthetists (google it, if you like) a few months ago, and declares blood transfusions have hurt more people than they've helped. Transfusions, he observes, are "almost a religion" because physicians practice them without solid evidence that they help. Several recent studies support his statement.
We all know that blood is a foreign tissue and we all know that the body tries to reject foreign tissue, even when the types match.
Jehovah's Witnesses steadfastly refuse blood transfusions (for religious reasons, not medical) and have created hundreds of Hospital Liaison Committees composed of members who interact with local hospitals and doctors. As a result, some in the medical field have pioneered bloodless techniques. By eliminating the risk of foreign tissue, human error, and blood-borne diseases, these new techniques offer a safety margin that conventional blood transfusions do not. The film Knocking states there are over 140 medical centers in North America that offer some form of bloodless surgical techniques. Might the day come, or is it even here already, when the number of lives saved through such medicine will outnumber those lost by a few members of a relatively tiny religious group that stuck to its principles amidst much opposition?
Okay for an update?
I have read only two (besides my own) non-condemnatory posts on this subject, perhaps from the two most qualified to speak, since they spoke to or knew people involved. Everyone else gave their responses based on the newspaper account. I listed the two sources in my own post.
One of the blogs (by a friend of Dennis) says this:
"A related side note: I have read twenty years of the New England Journal of Medicine's articles on what he had. In the list of treatments recommended, Blood transfusion was not mentioned. The only reason they recommended it was to try to buy more time for the blood thickening drugs to bring the levels up so he could accept the continuation of chemotherapy. Also, they got to it too late. He'd already had leukemia for a long time and nothing could save him; the only thing a transfusion could do was extend his misery a couple years at most."
The other (by a med student who spoke to some involved) says this:
"The treatment denied by the judge was not the stem cell transplant. It was a blood transfusion. Why is this distinction important? Stem cell transplants are the single most expensive procedure in medicine (hundreds of thousands of dollars just to do the procedure). We do them (and many health insurers cover them) because they work, but not all patients facing leukemia choose to be transplanted. Some cannot afford it. Some do not want to go through the pain of the procedure. Others (like this patient) have different reasons. If after providing all of the information, the patient does not consent to a procedure, the medical establishment usually respects this decision. Keep in mind that the legal decision here was related to the blood transfusion which could keep the patient alive for several days, not the stem cell transplant, which has 70% survival at 5 years as reported in the media. It's not as simple as a 750 word article would have you believe. (Although the Seattle PI wrote a good story overall.)"
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