death
Faith healing is the attempt to bring about healing through divine intervention. It is a form of paranormal or ‘energy’ healing. The Bible and other religious texts provide numerous examples of divine healing, and believers see this as a proof that faith healing is possible. There are also numerous reports of people suffering from severe diseases, including cancer and AIDS, who were allegedly healed by divine intervention.
Faith healing often takes the form of laying on hands where the preacher channels the divine energy via his hands into the patient’s body. Faith healing has no basis in science, is biologically not plausible. Some methodologically flawed studies have suggested positive effects e.g. , however, this is not confirmed by sound clinical trials.
Faith healing is often alleged to be safe, and many of us might thus say: WHY NOT? The truth, however, is that it can turn into a dangerous, even fatal SCAM. It has been reported that two parents from Lansing, USA who shunned medical care for their critically ill newborn daughter because of their religious beliefs, despite warnings the baby could die, were convicted on murder and child-abuse charges stemming from the infant’s death.
Less than 24 hours after Abigail Piland was born in 2017, a midwife and her apprentice noticed the infant was very ill and advised the mother to seek immediate medical attention. The mother declined, saying the baby was “born complete” and “God makes no mistakes.” “When you see abnormal, it can stand out pretty stark,” Laurie Vance, the apprentice, testified. “We could tell pretty immediately there were concerns because of the coloring of her skin. Her skin had become yellow.” Abigail died less than two days later, the result of a treatable condition known as hemolytic disease of the newborn.
Abigail died on the morning of Feb. 9, 2017. The parents and a group of friends prayed over Abigail’s lifeless body, and no one at the home called 911 to report the death, according to testimony. Rachel Piland’s brother, Joel Kerr, who lives in San Jose, California, testified Monday that he called Child Protective Services and Lansing police after learning from other family members that Abigail had died. The baby had been dead for about nine hours by the time investigators arrived on the night of Feb. 9.
Joshua and Rachel Piland, who had been free on bond since the case began about eight years ago, were led from the courtroom in handcuffs after a jury in Ingham County Circuit Court convicted them of second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse following a two-week trial.
The jury was allowed to consider lesser charges of involuntary manslaughter and third-degree child abuse, as well as not-guilty verdicts. They nonetheless convicted the Pilands on the most serious charges. Both charges carry a maximum sentence of up to life in prison. Sentencing is set for June 11.
The jury deliberated about four hours over two days before returning its verdicts after listening to days of often complex testimony by police, lay witnesses and medical doctors.
“It’s about Abigail,” Deputy Chief Assistant Ingham County Prosecutor Bill Crino had said during closing arguments in the trial. “She didn’t choose to be born into this situation. She was vulnerable. She was not communicative. She didn’t have a voice. Today, she gets a voice.”
The attorneys for the Pilands had argued they cared for their daughter as best they could. They said Crino failed to prove the parents acted with the intent necessary for them to be guilty of murder or involuntary manslaughter.
RUDOLF STEINER died 100 years ago today – a good reason, I think, to remember the utter nonsense he postulated (not only) in the realm of healthcare. Here is a slightly abbreviated section from my recent book:
Rudolf Steiner was born on 25 February 1861 in Kraljević, Austrian-Hungarian empire. At the age of 9, Steiner allegedly had his first spiritual experience; he saw the spirit of his deceased aunt. Realizing Rudolf’s potentials, his father sent his son first to a ‘Realschule’ in Wiener Neustadt and then to the ‘Technische Hochschule’ (Technical University) in Vienna where he studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, biology, literature, and philosophy. While Steiner was still a student, he was appointed as the natural science editor of a new edition of Goethe’s works.
In 1890, Steiner moved to Weimar, Germany, where he was employed at the Schiller-Goethe Archives. Concurrently, he started working for his doctoral degree, which he received in 1891 from the University of Rostock; the title of his dissertation, later published as a book, was ‘Wahrheit und Wissenschaft’ (Truth and Science).
In 1897, Steiner moved to Berlin, where he joined esoteric circles and studied Eastern and occult religions. In 1899, he married Anna Eunicke. Subsequently, Steiner met Marie von Sivers, an actress from the Baltic region and also a devotee of anthroposophy. They got married in 1914.
Steiner had by then joined the Theosophical Society and, in 1902, was made its General Secretary. Years of disagreement with key members of the organisation prompted him to leave the society in 1912. On 28 December of that year, Rudolf Steiner, along with a group of prominent German theosophists, founded the Anthroposophic Society.
Anthroposophy, a term borrowed from the 19th-century Swiss philosopher and physician Ignaz Troxler, is based on the notion that there is a spiritual world that is accessible only to the highest faculties of mental knowledge. Steiner rejected experimentation as a means of gaining knowledge; instead, he relied on imagination, inspiration and intuition. He claimed that his anthroposophy centered on “knowledge produced by the higher self in man.” He believed that humans once participated more fully in spiritual processes of the world through a dreamlike consciousness, but had since become restricted by their attachment to material things.
In 1913 at Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland, Steiner built the first ‘Goetheanum’, which he called a “school of spiritual science.” The building was destroyed by a fire in 1922 and subsequently replaced by the new ‘Goetheanum’ that still exists today. Steiner also worked on various other projects, including education (Waldorf schools) and biodynamic agriculture.
In the late 1910s, Steiner and his mistress, Ita Wegman, started working with medical doctors to create his anthroposophic medicine. In 1920, they founded the ‘Klinisch-Therapeutische Institut’ in Arlesheim, and on 21 March 1921, they organised the first of a series of courses for doctors in Dornach. This day is now considered to be the birth of anthroposophic medicine. In the same year, pharmacists and physicians gathered under Steiner’s guidance to create the pharmaceutical company, ‘Weleda’. At around the same time, Wegman founded the first anthroposophic medical clinic, the ‘Ita Wegman Clinic’ in Arlesheim.
Anthroposophic medicine cannot be adequately described through a single therapeutic modality. It has been aptly called a ‘pluriversum of theories and practices under the umbrella of an anthroposophic worldview’. The anthroposophic concept comprises a range of medications many (but not all) of which are plant-based, as well as art therapy, eurhythy (dance therapy), special dietary approaches, physiotherapy and other modalities. According to Steiner, humans have four ‘bodies’: The physical body, the ‘etheric’ body – which is based on formative forces, the ‘astral’ body – which reflects a person’s emotions and inner drives, and a conscious body – which is the domain of the ego and self.
For non-anthroposophist, these concepts are hardly comprehensible. They are based on associations between planets, metals and organs, from which therapeutic rules are derived. These affinities also form the basis of the many anthroposophical medicines, which are produced by liquefaction, aeration, solidification, combustion, potentiation and other processes. The history of the constituents of anthroposophic remedies is often considered to be more important than their material composition. According to Steiner and his substantial writings, “the spirit of the plant, which is drawn out of the tree by the parasitic plant act on the astral”. During the years before his death, Steiner, who had no medical background, often saw patients himself. He would then stare at them and divine both the diagnosis and the treatment; in other words, he acted as a clairvoyant lay-healer.
The Nazi movement had an ambivalent attitude to Steiner and to anthroposophic medicine. On the one hand, several leading Nazis such as Hess were clearly in favour of anthroposophic medicine. Steiner’s wife, Marie Steiner-von Sivers (1867 – 1948) who made significant contributions to anthroposophic medicine had publicly expressed sympathy for the Nazi regime since its beginnings. On the other hand, a political theorist of the Nazi movement, Dietrich Eckart, criticised Steiner in 1919 and (wrongly) suggested that he was a Jew. In 1921, Adolf Hitler accused Steiner of being a tool of the Jews, while other Nazis even called for a “war against Steiner”. In 1922, Steiner gave a lecture in Munich which was disrupted by Nazi thugs. Such hostilities led Steiner to leave his home in Berlin and move to Dornbach; he stated that, if the Nazis came to power in Germany, it would no longer be possible for him to live in Germany.
From 1923 on, Steiner showed signs of increasing frailness. He nonetheless continued to lecture widely. His last lecture was given in late September 1924. Steiner died at Dornach on 30 March 1925 in the presence of Ita Wegman.
Measles had been declared eliminated from the US in 2000. Now the disease is back with a vengeance. In February, an unvaccinated Texan child became the first person in a decade to die from measles in the US. Another death occurred in New Mexico.
The reason for the outbreak is simple: the uptake of the measles vaccine dropped below the 95% rate that is necessary for herd immunity. In the region where the current outbreak began, only 82% of the kids were vaccinated. This triggered the outbreak and, in turn, might mean that the US will lose its ‘measles elimination status’.
Only days after his appointment, Trump pledged to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization and to drastically cut the US Agency for International Development. Both moves are likely to cause more cases of measles and similarly vaccine-preventable diseases in the US and around the world. To make matters worse, Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
And to make matters even worse, Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the US most deluded antivaxer. Since being appointed, Kennedy has downplayed the importance of the current measles outbreak, postponed a meeting of the CDC vaccine advisers, made statements like “vaccinations are over-rated” and claimed that good nutrition and treatment with vitamin A as ways to reduce measles severity. He even praised the benefits of cod liver oil as a measure against measles. “There are adverse events from the vaccine,” Kennedy said in a March 11 interview. “It does cause deaths every year. It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves.” Further confirming his cluelessness Kennedy also stated: “When you and I were kids, everybody got measles, and measles gave you … lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that… The vaccine wanes 4.5% per year.”
But Kennedy does not just propagate BS in interviews, he also plans to investigate whether vaccines cause autism — an assumption that has been discredited ad nauseam. A spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) said: “The rate of autism in American children has skyrocketed. CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening.”
Meanwhile in Texas, some parents, who evidently believe Kennedy’s deluded nonsense, are giving unvaccinated children vitamin A, which, of course, is toxic at high doses.
I have to admit I don’t normally read the DALLAS MORNING NEWS -but perhaps I should! Here are a few excerpts from an article they just published:
Texas health experts are warning that vitamin A — found in food and in supplements such as cod liver oil — is not an alternative to measles vaccination. They’re urging Texans to vaccinate themselves and their children, as the West Texas measles outbreak continues to grow and after an unvaccinated child died from the illness.
Kennedy’s comments in the column — that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend vitamin A for people hospitalized with measles, and that studies have found vitamin A can help prevent measles deaths — are not inaccurate.
But they lack important context, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine. Hotez worries the missing context might mean people put their faith in vitamin A over vaccination — a decision that could cost lives. “The thing that I worry about is by [Kennedy] playing this up and others playing this up, it sends a false equivalency message, that somehow treating with vitamin A is equivalent to getting vaccinated, which is clearly not the case,” Hotez said…
“There’s zero evidence that it’s preventative,” said Dr. Christopher Dreiling, a pediatrician at Pediatric Associates of Dallas. Dreiling said he hasn’t had parents ask him about vitamin A for measles, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it started popping up after Kennedy’s comments. Dreiling’s main concern, he said, is that parents have correct information to make informed decisions…
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Kennedy is, of course, not alone in pushing Vitamin A for measles. On this blog, we recently saw Dana Ullman (MPH, CCH) doing the same. On Feb 28, he wrote the following comment:
Thank YOU for verifying that the Texas hospital here seems to have killed these children. According to your article above, the head of this Texas hospital asserted, “Unfortunately, like so many viruses, there aren’t any specific treatments for measles.”
And yet, according to the New England Journal of Medicine, Vitamin A has clearly been shown: “Treatment with vitamin A reduces morbidity and mortality in measles, and all children with severe measles should be given vitamin A supplements, whether or not they are thought to have a nutritional deficiency.”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199007193230304
And what might Kennedy and Ullman have in common (apart from being dangerous nut-cases and quackery-promoters)?
Simple: they both don’t understand science!
On this blog and elsewhere, we have many people doubting that COVID vaccinations were effective; some even claim that they were detrimental to our long-term health. In this context, cardiac conditions are often mentioned, as they constitute a significant category of potentially serious post-COVID conditions.
Perhaps these doubters will find this new analysis relevant. The objective of this systematic review was to synthesise the evidence on the factors associated with the development of post-COVID cardiac conditions, the frequency of clinical outcomes in affected patients, and the potential prognostic factors. A systematic review was conducted using the databases EBSCOhost, MEDLINE via PubMed, BVS, and Embase, covering studies from 2019 to December 2023. A total of 8343 articles were identified, and seven met the eligibility criteria for data extraction. The protective effect of vaccination stood out among the associated factors, showing a reduced risk of developing post-COVID cardiac conditions. Conversely, COVID-19 reinfections were associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular outcomes. Regarding the main outcomes in these patients, most recovered, although some cases persisted beyond 200 days of follow-up. The study included in the analysis of prognostic factors reported that the four children who did not recover by the end of the study were between two and five years old and had gastrointestinal symptoms during the illness.
The authors concluded that the present findings provide valuable contributions to a better understanding of the evolution of post-COVID cardiac conditions. Despite the limited number of eligible studies, this review offers insights that describe the progression of cardiac conditions, from their onset to medium-term follow-up of patients. The protection offered by the COVID-19 vaccination regimen was observed beyond the acute phase of the disease, reducing the risk of developing post-COVID cardiac conditions. Public policies encouraging vaccination should be promoted to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections and reinfections. Given that both COVID-19 and heart diseases occupy a significant place on the global health agenda, post-COVID cardiac conditions deserve due attention. Although most patients recover in the short term, some require care for many months to prevent chronicity and complications, particularly in vulnerable groups such as children and older adults. COVID-19 emerged as a pandemic in 2020, and four years later, it continues to impact the entire planet. This study provides important evidence to guide government policies on post-COVID conditions surveillance, prevention, and targeted healthcare interventions. Although this review compiles the available evidence on the topic, it is clear that there is still much to learn about post-COVID cardiac conditions. Strengthening the research agenda by proposing and conducting primary studies on the subject is important. Additionally, this review should be regularly updated as new studies are published in the field.
I would be delighted to hear that this new analysis has persuaded some doubters that COVID vaccinations are, after all. helpful interventions – but (as always on such occasions) I will not hold my breath!
As we have discussed previously, there is an outbreak of measles affecting unvaccinated children in the US. In an attempt to reassure the US public, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services is watching the Texas measles outbreak. “It’s not unusual,” he claimed when pressed by reporters. “We have measles outbreaks every year.” This, of course, is quite misleading.
Yes, there are regular outbreaks, but they are hardly comparable to the current one. The last person to succumb to measles in the US died in 2015 during an outbreak in Clallam County, Washington state, in which only a couple dozen people were infected. Measles was then identified as the cause of death of a woman. The autopsy found that she had “several other health conditions and was on medications that contributed to a suppressed immune system,” the US Health Department said at the time.
Kennedy misstated a number of further facts:
- Kennedy claimed that most of the patients who had been hospitalized were there only for “quarantine.” Dr. Lara Johnson at Covenant, the hospital in question, contested that characterization. “We don’t hospitalize patients for quarantine purposes,” said Johnson, the chief medical officer.
- Kennedy claimed that two people had died of measles. Yet Andrew Nixon, the spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services clarified that, at the time, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified only one death.
Gaines County has reported 80 measles cases so far. It has one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year.
Some of the hospitalised patients’ respiratory issues progressed to pneumonia, and they needed an oxygen tube to breathe, Johnson explained. Others had to be intubated, though Johnson declined to say how many. “Unfortunately, like so many viruses, there aren’t any specific treatments for measles,” she said. “What we’re doing is providing supportive care, helping support the patients as they hopefully recover.”
Last week, Trump seemed to buy into the already thoroughly debunked vaccines-cause-autism conspiracy that Kennedy famously has been promoting for years. Trump claimed that the Pennsylvania Dutch’s simplistic and unvaccinated lifestyle could be used as a potential model to avoid the disorder.
Meanwhile, multiple vaccine projects have been stopped by Kennedy. He paused a multimillion-dollar project to create a new Covid-19 vaccine in pill form on Tuesday. This project was a $460 million contract with Vaxart to develop a new Covid vaccine in pill form, with 10,000 people scheduled to begin clinical trials on Monday. Of that, $240 million was reportedly already authorized for preliminary research.
Furthermore, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC, was scheduled to meet in March to discuss the strains that would be included in next season’s flu shot, but federal officials told the committee that the meeting was canceled, said committee member Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit told NBC News that no explanation was given for the cancellation of the yearly spring meeting, which comes in the middle of a flu season in which 86 children and 19,000 adults have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an email to NBC, Norman Baylor, a former director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccine Research and Review, said, “I’m quite shocked. As you know, the VRBPAC is critical for making the decision on strain selection for the next influenza vaccine season.”
Finally, an upcoming CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting was also postponed last week. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, was scheduled to meet Feb. 26 through Feb. 28. The group of independent experts convenes three times a year on behalf of the CDC to weigh the pros and cons of newly approved or updated vaccines. The postponement will put Kennedy at odds with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who is a doctor and the chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which oversees HHS. Kennedy had promised Cassidy to give the Senate prior notice before making changes to certain vaccine programs. “If confirmed, he [Kennedy] will maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without change,” Cassidy said in a speech on the Senate floor supporting Kennedy’s HHS nomination earlier this month.
The dangerous mess the new US governement got itself into within days of alledgedly governing seems monsterous. It is hard to conclude that Kennedy is competent or has abandonned his longstanding anti-vax stance. He clearly does not persue a reasonable strategy to protect the US from outbreaks of infections, endemics or pandemics. On the contrary, he is playing fast and loose with the health of US citizens and. as a consequence, with the health of all of us.
The aim of this study was to review the deaths associated with chiropractic treatment in Australia. The National Coronial Information System (NCIS) was searched for cases in Australia for which chiropractic treatment was determined to have contributed to death. Closed, completed Australian cases between 1 July 2000 and 31 December 2019 were evaluated (approximately 356,000 cases).
The findings revealed only one case in which chiropractic treatment was considered to have contributed to death. The case was that of an adult male who died from a dissected left vertebral artery following chiropractic manipulation for neck pain.
In addition, postmortem records at Forensic Science SA (FSSA) were searched for similar cases over the same time period (approximately 30,000 cases). No cases definitely attributable to chiropractic manipulation of the neck were found, but a case with thrombus in the left vertebral artery would not be entirely excluded as being related to chiropractic treatment.
Deaths associated with chiropractic manipulation in Australia therefore appear rare. Although there is a reported incidence of stroke associated with vertebrobasilar artery system occlusion following chiropractic manipulation, stroke associated with vertebrobasilar artery occlusion has also been observed following a visit to a primary care physician. This could be explained by vertebrobasilar artery pathology causing neck pain that initiated consultation.
The authors concluded that the present study only demonstrates a rare temporal, but not causal, relationship between attending a chiropractor and vertebral artery dissection causing death. Non-lethal injuries were not assessed.
This is an interesting paper. Many chiropractors steadfastly deny that their manipulations can cause serious problems. This analysis clearly shows that this assumption is untrue. It also suggests that deaths are rare. The question is: how reliable is this conclusion?
The authors searched NCIS and the FSSA for cases for which chiropractic treatment was determined to have contributed to death. In other words, fatalities for which chiropractic treatment had not been determined to have contributed to death were not considered. Because the link between a person’s death and a spinal manipulation might often not be made, further cases of deaths might need to be added to the total.
A further question is this: even if – as we all hope – deaths are very rare, does that mean chiropractic manipulations are safe? Here the answer is clearly NO! Death is merely the most dramatic outcome. Spinal manipulations can cause strokes, and most of these events do result in neurological deficits but not death.
Finally, we need to consider the risk/benefit balance of chiropractic manipulations. As often discussed here, the benefits of spinal manipulation are, depending on the indication, small or uncertain. This means that even rare but serious adverse events weigh heavily and tilt the balance into the negative. In short, this means that chiropractors should be avoided.
In conclusion, this paper leaves no doubt that chiropractic manipulations can be deadly. One would very much hope that such fatalities are extremely rare events, however, the data provided are not convincing.
This story of a woman suffering from early-stage breast cancer is in many ways remarkable. After being diagnosed, she scheduled consultations with surgeons but, because it was the holiday season, appointments were delayed. She therefore decided to use the time proactively and arranged a consultation with ‘Dr. T,’ an integrative medical doctor. She wanted to explore if supplements could support her health while I waited for treatment.
Dr. T mentioned another holistic practitioner, ‘Dr. D’, who specialized in thermography, a thermal imaging technique that maps blood flow on the breast’s surface. Dr. D had allegedly “healed” a breast cancer patient without surgery, radiation or chemotherapy. The patient was intrigued and made an appointment with Dr. D. and had a thermogram.
This involved nine thermal images taken with a special camera, followed by a “cold challenge” where the patient submerged her hands in icy water. She was told that healthy tissue cools in sync with the brain’s signals, while cancerous tumors show up as hot spots.
Discussing the findings with the patient, Dr, D. explained that the thermography had not detected a breast cancer; it it had only revealed “extra heat” in the area. This, the doctor explained, would put her in the “high-risk” category. He explained further that cancer was caused by “too many COVID vaccines,” and therefore the patient shouldn’t get another. “What about the fact that my mom had the same type of cancer, in the same breast, at the same age?” She asked in disbelief. “No, it’s definitely the vaccines,” the doctor insisted, before pivoting to his next pitch: Super Mineral Water, a product he sold in his clinic, which he claimed could “detox” the patient’s body and possibly help cure her.
At this point, the patient, who happened to be a science writer by profession, was horrified and embarrassed — not just by the quackery, but also by her own naiveté for walking into this mess. She took the only sensible action possible: she grabbed her things and left as quickly as she could.
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When we discuss so-called alternative medicine (SCAM), we regularly forget alternative diagnostic methods. Thermography might be counted as one of them, particularly when it is used for diagnosing cancer. A systematic review of the evidence concluded that currently there is not sufficient evidence to support the use of thermography in breast cancer screening, nor is there sufficient evidence to show that thermography provides benefit to patients as an adjunctive tool to mammography or to suspicious clinical findings in diagnosing breast cancer.
The danger with alternative diagnostic methods are mainly twofold.
- False positive diagnoses (FPD): this means a clinician uses an alternative diagnostic technique and concludes that the patient is suffering from disease xy, while she is, in fact, healthy. FPDs usually prompt lengthy treatments. They thus cause harm by firstly prompting worries and secondly expence.
- False negative diagnoses (FND): this means a clinician uses an alternative diagnostic technique and concludes that the patient is healthy, while she is, in fact, ill. FNDs prompt the patient to no treat her condition in a timely fashion. This can cause untold harm, in extreme cases even death.
In the case above, Dr, D. tried to combine the two options. He issued a FND that could have cost the patient’s life. Simultaneously, he made a FPD that was aimed at filling his pocket.
The story has fortunately a happy ending. After escaping the quack doctor, the patient received proper treatment and made a full recovery.
I am often amazed at the harm done by religious nutters, particularly when they employ their ‘religion’ as a replacement for medicine. Here is a truly horrific example.
It has been reported that all 14 members of a fringe religious group have been found guilty of the manslaughter of eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs, who died after her insulin was withheld at her home in Toowoomba, Queensland.
The group faced a lengthy judge-only trial in Brisbane last year. They all represented themselves in court and refused to enter any pleas. During the trial, the Supreme Court heard the group rejected the medical system and the use of medications and put their full trust in the healing power of God. The prosecution alleged that the girl’s father, Jason Struhs, who had only recently joined the church, acted recklessly when he stopped administering the life-saving medication, as he knew this would likely lead to Elizabeth’s death. The group leader, Brendan Stevens, was accused of encouraging and counselling him to withdraw the insulin.
Justice Martin Burns acknowledged Elizabeth was a happy, vibrant child who was adored by her parents and every member of her church but who, due to their belief in the healing power of God, “left no room for recourse to any form of medical care or treatment, [and] she was deprived of the one thing that would most definitely have kept her alive — insulin”. Justice Burns said Stevens did procure and aid in the unlawful killing of Elizabeth by persuading, encouraging and supporting her father to cease using insulin, and his attempts to claim he didn’t influence him was “arrant nonsense”.
Shortly after Elizabeth’s death, Jason Struhs told police it “felt right” to stop her insulin and she was “as happy as anything”. He told police he made the decision to stop the medication and had said to her, “we are not going to do it anymore”. Subsequently, Elizabeth’s health had deteriorated over several days, and instead of contacting emergency services, the group prayed and sang. They did not contact police until more than 24 hours after she had died. When asked if they had anything to say following the verdicts, all members of the group declined to comment.
After their arrests the group continued to maintain their views, and repeatedly said in police interviews they believed Elizabeth would rise from the dead.
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Cases like this are shocking. Amongst other things, they remind us what consequences may and often will occur, when belief in unreason dominates reason, evidence and science.
It does not happen every day that the prestigeous German FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG publishes an in-depth analysis of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and even discusses several of the themes that we, here on this blog, have often debated. Allow me, therefore, to translate a few passages from the recent FAZ article entitled “Der Fluch der alten Dinge” (The Curse of Old Things):
… TCM has countless followers in many countries. ‘TCM is a wonderful medicine that thinks ‘holistically’, that sees not just one organ but the whole person and that offers very good treatment options,’ says Dominik Irnich. He heads the German Medical Association for Acupuncture. Although there is not evidence for all indications, TCM is ‘a scientifically based option for a number of diseases, the effects of which have been proven many times over’…
Meanwhile, Beijing wants to utilise the positive image of TCM to present itself in a good light and promote exports. The current five-year plan also provides for the creation of around 20 TCM positions for epidemic prevention and control. Critics, on the other hand, see patients at risk due to insufficiently tested therapies – and medicine as a whole: many studies are hardly valid and distort the state of science…
The top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is using the ‘old things’ to increase its global influence and utilise TCM not only in its own country, but also as an export hit. The global TCM market is estimated to be worth many billions of euros annually, but there are no reliable figures – not least because it often includes illegally traded products such as rhino horn or donkey skin, which has led to mass killings.
Officially, Beijing prosecutes illegal trade and promotes science-based medicine, but the interests are intertwined. Even under Mao, traditional methods were used in China as a favourable alternative to imported medicines, and Beijing is currently increasingly allowing them to be reimbursed. At the same time, China’s leadership is trying to anchor TCM products in healthcare worldwide, for example as part of a ‘health Silk Road’ in Africa. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the state not only used TCM products en masse in its own country, Chinese foreign representatives also distributed them to Chinese people in Europe. This included a product based on gypsum, apricot kernels and plant parts called Lianhua Qingwen. According to a report published by the consulate in Düsseldorf, this was distributed even though the sale of medicines outside of pharmacies is generally punishable by law.
Beijing has also been successful at the level of the World Health Organisation (WHO), which promotes traditional medicine from China. ‘This was part of the interests and election programme of former Chinese Director-General Margaret Chan,’ says WHO consultant Ilona Kickbusch. The WHO drew up standards for acupuncture training, including knowledge of the ‘function and interactive relationship of qi, blood, essence and fluid’, as the document states.
In 2019, the WHO member states decided to add a chapter on ‘traditional medicine’ to the standard classification of diseases. Doctors can now code alleged patterns of ‘qi stagnation’ or yang deficiency of the liver. The umbrella organisation of European science academies EASAC criticised this as a ‘significant problem’: doctors and patients could be misled and pressure could be exerted on healthcare providers to reimburse unscientific approaches. Nature magazine found: ‘The WHO’s association with drugs that have not been properly tested and could even be harmful is unacceptable for the organisation that has the greatest responsibility and power to protect human health.’ …
In general, the study situation on therapies that are categorised as TCM is extremely confusing. The evidence is ‘terrible’, says the physician Edzard Ernst, who has analysed such procedures. ‘There are thousands of studies – that’s part of the problem.’ Many studies come from China, but it is known that a large proportion are invalid or falsified. It is almost impossible to report critically on TCM there: according to media reports, a doctor was imprisoned for three months in 2018 after criticising a TCM remedy. In 2020, Beijing even considered banning criticism of TCM, but refrained from doing so after an outcry.
According to Ernst, the quality of even some of the meta-analyses from the respected Cochrane Collaboration is ‘hair-raising’ due to the inclusion of unreliable studies, and according to some Chinese researchers, acupuncture works for everything. Prof. Unschuld said at an event a year ago that he was asked in China not to address critical issues.
‘In a country without the open and free critical culture that is common in democratic countries, the control mechanisms are missing,’ says Jutta Hübner, Professor of Integrative Oncology at Jena University Hospital. The inclusion of Chinese studies, which almost never report negative results, can create a much too positive image of TCM at a formally very high level of scientific evidence, without the results being reliable…
Instead of allowing the research to be carried out by proponents, it would be desirable ‘if the universities in particular remembered that they have the duty to be critical,’ says physician Edzard Ernst. However, some university clinics prefer to advertise TCM methods in order to attract patients and money.
