Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Madeline dies as parents pray

This is Madeline Neumann, 11. She died of untreated diabetes because her parents chose to pray for their daughter instead of taking her to a doctor to be examined. I found this on FoxNews(!):

Wisconsin Parents Didn\'t Expect Daughter to Die During Prayer

According to the article, Madeline's parents hadn't taken their daughter to a doctor since she was three.

This is somewhat reminiscent of a case from last November, where a fourteen-year-old boy with leukemia was allowed to refuse to have a blood transfusion because of his religious beliefs, even though his parents wanted him to have one.

Judge rules Jehovah's Witness boy can refuse life-saving blood transfusion

What do you think? Should kids with treateble diseases be allowed to die because of their own or their parents' beliefs? Should a fourteen-year-old boy be allowed to, basically, choose suicide on religious grounds against his parents' wishes? Is Jehovas Witnesses a respectable religion if it teaches that God does not allow sick kids to have blood transfusions? And should it be up to parents to decide if they want medical treatment for their very sick kids, or if they want to stick to prayer instead?

Ann

I saw this the other day. The way I read it was that she'd only been getting sick for a month or even less. The article sounds like she was only REALLY sick for 24 hours or so. Should they have taken her to a doctor? Sure. Would I have? Almost certainly. Is not taking a child to a doctor after age 3 evil? No. I know parents who don't immunize [something I don't agree with but one of the main purposes of annual checkups for kids is shots as well as a general check up which isn't strictly NECESSARY imo if other checks are in place to catch developmental and other problems - recommended, yes; NECESSARY, probably not]. Many places offer immunizations for cheap or free so a doc visit may not be necessary for that either.

My almost 3 year old hasn't been to the doctor for an illness in 18 months. Her only visit last year was her well visit. I didn't go to a doctor for years after I started school because I wasn't sick often and my parents didn't do annual checks for whatever reason.

Something else to consider... if you don't have a regular doc [the ones around here consider you a current patient if you've been in the last two years - more than two you're a new patient again] it can takes WEEKS to get in. We switched insurance and I went back to my old doc after three years and had to wait almost 2 months to get in. If she didn't have a doc, that could be an issue. Of course, an ER/Urgent Care would have seen her immediately, but her parents may not have realized the seriousness.

I'm not saying there may not be culpability - there may well be - but I think more details are necessary, IMO.

The other one: To say the boy's parents want him to have the transfusion is a bit misleading. His parents don't have custody; his aunt does. His aunt agrees with the decision. The article doesn't say why she has custody instead of the parents.

If his parents had custody and wanted him to have one and he didn't, what would happen? That's more... relevant? Not sure that's the word I want. Should a 14 year old be allowed to make medical decisions? In some [all?] states, 14 year old girls can have abortions without parental notification, much less parental consent. I don't agree with that either though.

As much as I disagree with the decision to not give the transfusion, I think the judge is probably 'right' on this one give that the custodial adult agreed with the decision. JW don't believe in blood transfusions - I forget why. If the court system were to overrule the religious beliefs, that could be a very slippery slope - one I don't care to get on.

Just my .02 .
Carol

Yes, according to the article, she had probably only had her diabetes for a month before it killed her. But her parents said that she had been tired. Untreated diabetes of type 1, where a person's adrenal glands stop producing insulin all at once, progresses quite rapidly. If Madeline's parents had paid attention to their daughter, surely they must have seen that she was just getting more and more tired, and weaker and weaker? If one of your kids had become more and more tired for, say, two weeks, wouldn't you have wanted a check-up for him or her?

As for inoculation... I remember a case in Holland from around 1970. A religious group refused to have their kids immunized against polio. Well, there was an outbreak of polio in this very community, and several kids got paralysed for life, and at least one or two kids died.

Ann

Not going to comment on the issue at hand, but I did want to make some factual corrections:

Type 1 diabetes is actually the lumped name for a whole variety of disorders. There are over a hundred different kinds of diabetes, but they're generally referred to as Type 1 or Type 2, depending on the wider picture.

Insulin is produced by beta islet cells, which are located in the pancreas (not the adrenal gland).

Normally, you only need about 5% of the insulin your body is capable of producing. In Type 1 diabetes, something happens to interfere with the body's ability to produce insulin. In most cases, it's the immune system attacking the islet cells. This can go on for years undetected, depending on how quickly the islet cells are being killed off. (Full-blown diabetes has been known to develop in infants, but it's more common in young children - around 10 years old, give or take a few years. I was diagnosed at 12.)

You start to notice the first symptoms when about 90% of the islet cells are dead. At that point, if anything happens that requires significantly more insulin than usual - a massive influx of sugar, major illness, etc. - your body may not be fully able to meet the demands.

The gradual decline will continue (in my case, it was well over a year after those early signs before I became a full-blown diabetic), but once insulin production drops below normal operating thresholds, things start to happen much more rapidly. Fatigue is not uncommon. Excessive thirst and very frequent trips to the bathroom (as your body attempts to flush out all the excess sugar it's no longer able to process) are also very common. Nausea, particularly associated with eating sugary or starchy foods. General malaise.

It's at this point that the body, unable to gain proper nutrition from carbs, begins to digest its fat reserves. As much as you eat, you still lose weight rapidly. The chemical byproducts produced by doing so can make you even sicker. (It's this state, BTW, that the Atkins diet attempts to simulate.)

You get sicker and sicker, wasting away, and the only thing that can stop the process is insulin therapy.

Without that... Once your fat reserves are burned up (generally within a few months, but it can be much quicker if you start out relatively skinny -as the girl in the picture appears to be), that's pretty much it. Rapid decline as your body attempts to digest whatever is available, and then you just... burn out.

Thankfully, German doctors can treat children whether their parents want it or not, if the child's life is in danger. Of course they need to see the child in order to be able to treat it. All the doctors need is to place a call with the authorities, telling them what they are about to do and why they don't think that they can respect the parent's will.

At least this is what I learned and I very much like this idea.

Oh, BTW:

The other three kids have been taken away for the duration of the investigation.

Ann - it's quite possible that I would have. However, if 'tired' and 'thirsty' were her biggest symptoms, and I didn't know those were symptoms of diabetes [I do know that but not everyone does], it's quite possible I might have waited till Monday [if only the last 24 hours were abnormally bad]. My kids are always extra tired when sick and drink lots of water anyway so I don't know that I'd notice extra water. I'm not saying they weren't negligent, I'm saying more information is needed before a determination could be made.

I see no problem with blood transfusions, personally, but the government/courts getting involved in religious decisions is a bit scary. For me that wouldn't be a religious decisions, but for JW it is. The parents were non-custodial for some reason - what reasons should play a role IMO. Was the child taken away for negligence or left in the custody of the aunt to finish out a school year [for instance] - though in that case the parents would likely still actually retain custody but the point is the same.

The only example I'm coming up with at the moment would be a state mandate abortion but I'm also sleep deprived [8 month old isn't sleeping more than 90m at a time night most nights] and when I tried to explain it, well... it wasn't happening...

Carol

Thanks for the info, Paul. Very interesting. I'm still wondering about the way Madeline's parents described their daughter's illness, though. While I realize that you have, of course, no specific information about Madeline's case, would you, nevertheless, discuss a general question about diabetes type 1? Would you say it is possible for a child to develop diffuse symptoms of diabetes - in Madeline's case, her symptoms (according to her parents) were nothing more than tiredness - but to remain apparently healthy apart from her tiredness, and stay that way for a month without getting worse at all, and then suddenly become critically ill and die within twenty-four hours?

Ann

I don't know, exactly. It can look a lot like a case of something like the flu. You're tired. You're having trouble holding food down. You're thirsty. You're just not feeling well. It gets worse rapidly.

And if your blood sugar gets too out of control (high or low), you can pass out and go into a coma, which, if left untreated, can rapidly lead to death.

And if there's anything else going wrong - some other organ in distress, some brewing illness - then having all that sugar in your blood and none of it in your cells can seriously exacerbate that. Bacterial infections have plenty of sugar floating around to encourage them. The kidneys have so much more to process. Cells all over the body (particularly without the help of fat reserves) are starving...

I don't know. I'm not a doctor. I know my own case best, and that obviously hasn't happened to me. But, depending on her condition and what else was going on, a rapid decline could be possible. Many cases of diabetes aren't diagnosed until the child collapses and is rushed to the hospital. And if you don't take her to the hospital, and she's lying in a coma with nothing to fuel her body... 24 hours just might do it.

Thanks, Paul. We don't know the details about Madeline's case, so it's rather useless to speculate. Still though, the parents admitted that Madeline had been tired and not quite herself for a month, and if she then got incredibly much worse - if she went into a coma, like you said - shouldn't the parents have been alarmed? Wouldn't any normal parents have tried to get a doctor for their daughter right away? Really, aren't Madeline's parents unfit as parents if they didn't even try to get medical help for her, at least not until their daughter had been in a coma for many hours?

You know what I find most disturbing about the case? Not that the poor girl died, because sometimes kids do die in spite of the best intentions of their parents. No, but the way the parents spoke about the whole thing afterwards. According to some media - which may not be telling the truth, I know, I know - but according some media, the parents said that they hadn't tried to get a doctor for their daughter because they thought she was suffering from a 'spiritual attack'. I take that to mean that they thought that their daughter was being assaulted by the Devil, much like the girl in the classic movie, The Exorcist, was being possessed by the Devil. Also, when the parents were asked why they thought their daughter had died, they didn't say that it was because they had made a tragic mistake and waited too long to get her to a doctor. No, instead they reportedly said that their daughter had died because their own faith had not been strong enough! Talk about having learnt your lesson. These parents have three other kids, and while the surviving children have been removed from their parents while the Madeline case is being investigated, who knows if they won't be returned there again? Suppose they will be returned. What has the death of their sister taught the parents of these kids? Not that it might be a good idea to take a sick kid to hospital. No, the parents have learnt that if another of their children gets sick in the same way as Madeline - and remember that diabetes can run in the family - then they'll know that they will have to pray harder than they did for Madeline, and they will have to believe in God's healing power more fervently than they did for the girl that died. That sounds reassuring, no?

Ann

EDIT: I'm not sure Madeline's parents called a doctor at all. I think it might be a relative who finally called for an ambulance. Unfortunately, it was too late by then.

I'll try to make this my last post here. The case just gets to me.

I've talked about my grandfather before - an intelligent, almost brilliant man, who was also bottomlessly naïve and an incurable believer. He particularly believed in faith healing. For as long as I knew him, he was always enthusiastically praying for something miraculous to happen. It never did. But my grandfather never stopped believing.

I got nearsighted at an early age. When my grandfather found out, he called me and told me that God would fix my eyes soon. He, my grandfather, would start praying for me right away, and then it wouldn't be long until I could throw away my glasses.

Soon afterwards my grandfather called back. He had prayed for me now for a whole hour. Did I notice any difference? No, sadly, I didn't. He was disappointed, but he promised me he would keep praying for me and he would call me back the next day. And he did. And he called the next day again, and the next... and he was always so expectant, so hopeful. And I always had to dash his hopes. Do you know what a guilt trip that is? What was wrong with me? My grandfather surely did his part for me, he prayed and prayed and prayed for me... why couldn't I open my heart to God and receive the healing that my grandfather assured me was there for me if I would only accept it? Why couldn't I do my part for my grandfather and get my eyes better and vindicate my grandfather's faith?

To me, faith healing was something that was full of guilt and pain at my own inability to make myself better. It was proof that God indeed didn't like me much, which I had already suspected. And that is why I wonder what the faith healing that Madeline Neumann's parents tried to give their daughter was like for her. Supposedly she told her parents about her health problems after she started getting symptoms of her diabetes, or if she didn't tell them, they probably noticed anyway. And after that, I would assume that the parents started praying for her. Quite possibly they started praying with her, assuring her that God would soon make her well. But she could feel that this wasn't happening. She wasn't getting better, but worse.

Madeline's parents said that their daughter had not become sicker during the month that she was having symptoms, but instead she had seemed to get better. Personally I wonder if she did everything she could to hide her symptoms from her parents. What could she tell them?

"Mom, Dad, I'm not getting better. I'm getting worse. God hasn't healed me. Has he rejected me? Is that why I'm not getting better?

Am I going to die soon?

Am I doomed?

Will I go to hell because God has rejected me?

Will I burn in hell forever and ever?"

The way I see it, Madeline's parents didn't only cheat their daughter out of the chance of surviving a treatable disease. It is quite possible that they also made Madeline feel that she was an evil, hopeless girl, who had become sick because God had rejected her and who was going to spend eternity in hell.

So those of you who believe in faith healing, please bear in mind what a horrible guilt trip it can be for the sick person to fail to get better even though a lot of people are praying for him or her. Don't add insult to injury by making the sick person feel responsible for his or her own failing health.

And take your kids to hospital.

Ann

More details have emerged about this case, as the parents have been charged with second-degree reckless homicide on the death of their daughter.

Parents charged in death...

For me this is a case of 'blind faith' that led to much suffering and eventually a child's death-how can anyone justify leaving their child in such a state and blame it on a "devil"???

Thanks for the update, Saffron.

I know this is just me, and my hangup about parents being more willing to risk or sacrifice their daughters than their sons. I don't mean, of course, that all and every parent values his or her daughter less than his or her son. Of course not!!!! Please don't take it like that. No, but I strongly believe that there are more parents who are willing to risk their daughters than there are parents who are willing to risk their sons. I think, therefore, that the fact that Madeline Neumann was a girl may have contributed to her mother's insistence not to take her daughter to a doctor. Leilani Neumann was willing to risk her daughter's life in order to test her own faith. I'm not sure she would have been willing to gamble with her son's life like that.

According to the CNN report, another couple faces charges of manslaughter for refusing to take their sick 15-month-old baby to a doctor, insisting on praying for the child instead. The child died. And yes, the dead child was a little girl.

Ann

Ann, you have stated this belief many times before, so I'm not expecting to change your mind. I will reiterate, however, that I personally do not agree with you as far as Western society is concerned. I don't know enough about other cultures to feel qualified to comment. And I admit that I know very little about this whole case, but I have not read anything that would indicate that the parents acted one way because it was a daughter who had fallen ill.

As we've all read, the parents are deeply religious and believed that prayer and faith would be enough to save their daughter. Whether or not you hold to that particular belief (for the record, I do not), they are not alone. Would they have done the same if a son had been the one to fall ill? It appears that way to me. I've seen nothing that indicates they loved Madeline any less - or adjusted their view of medical treatment - just because she was a girl.

Kathy

I also don't know anything about the Madeline case beyond what little I have read on the internet. I agree with you that I find it out of the question that Madeline's parents would have made the conscious decision to risk their daughter's life because they deemed her less valuable because of her gender. Like I said, I don't believe for a moment that Madeline's parents made such a conscious decision. Whether or not subconscious motivations prompted them to withhold medical treatment for their daughter, when they would not have done so for their son, is another question.

I'm almost 53 years old. I can remember, during my lifetime, that about 12-15 small babies have been found abandoned and sometimes dead in Sweden. In one case, the sex of the baby was never disclosed. In one case, the baby was a boy. All other cases were girls. Well. Some girls have all the bad luck.

Madeline did, too. Her parents were so religous that they wouldn't give their kids medical treatment, and it was probably just coincidence that the child who suffered the consequences of the parents' faith was a girl. Similarly, it was probably just coincidence that the dead baby in Oregon was a girl, too.

Or maybe it was not coincidence. Maybe those two sets of parents would have brought their kids to a doctor after all if the kid had been a boy.

Remember the case with the fourteen-year-old boy who was a Jehova's Witness and didn't want a blood transfusion? His parents definitely wanted him to have one.

Does anyone know of a case where "nice religious people" like the Neumanns have withheld medical treatment from their son, so that he died? I'm just wondering. (The aunt of that boy who needed blood tranfusions doesn't count. She was not his biological parent, and the boy was strongly against blood transfusions himself.)

Remember that case in Sweden, where a baby boy was found abandoned (and in his case, dead)? I really wondered about that mother. What possessed her to abandon and kill her son, when no other mothers seem to do that?

I read a bit more about that particular case. The mother was mildly retarded. She had always wanted a son, and when she had a son at the age of seventeen, she was overjoyed.

Unfortunately she wasn't able to be responsible when it came to her sex life. She soon got pregnant again, and again, and again. She gave birth to three daughters whom she didn't want, so she had them adopted.

Then she got pregnant again, and she found it just too embarrassing to admit it. So she hid her pregnancy by wearing bulky clothes, and then she gave birth at home in her own kitchen. As soon as her baby was born, she grabbed a towel and wrapped the small body in it. Then she put the baby in the freezer. Interestingly, she never looked at the baby, and therefore she had no idea if it was a boy or a girl.

So the only baby boy who has ever been found dead or abandoned by his mother in Sweden during the last circa forty years was killed by a woman who didn't know if her baby was a boy or a girl. Maybe all the women who killed or abandoned their baby girls also didn't know if their children were boys or girls. But, you know, I think most of them knew. And all those women who didn't abandon or kill their baby boys - that would be absolutely all new mothers of sons in Sweden except one during this time - maybe even the worst-off of them held on to their babies because they were boys. At least I think that may have been part of the reason.

Ann