Canadians, The National Post is satire, right?

[Lorizael]

I'm not arguing that science is incorrect, my question is do I have the right to impose that opinion on another?

Medical science not being wrong about the worthlessness of "traditional remedies" is not an opinion.

[loinburger]

I'm not arguing that science is incorrect, my question is do I have the right to impose that opinion on another?

If the parents killed their child as an honor killing, would you argue that we didn't have the right to impose the "honor killings are wrong" opinion on them?

Assuming you agree that we would have the right to prevent or punish an honor killing, then why wouldn't we have the right to impose the "life-threatening illnesses should be treated" opinion on them? What makes homicide through intentional neglect so much more culturally sacrosanct than homicide though inflicting bodily harm?

[Elok]

Remove the historically oppressed minority from the picture. There have been cases where Charismatic Christians with epileptic children treated the seizures as demonic possession and resorted to increasingly, ah, vigorous exorcisms, sometimes killing the child as a result. Should that, too, be allowed?

[Lorizael]

No, except in Italy. Romans used to feed Christians to lions, after all.

[Bereta_Eder]

No, except in Italy. Romans used to feed Christians to lions, after all.

Did they do that though?
I suppose they did but there are many stories that are being dusputed now.
For example, Sparta and Keadas. Were deformed children really thrown off a cliff?
The story now goes that this was not the case.
Is it so, or is it revisionism?

Anyway I know what I would do if I was in ancient times.
I'd cultivate mold and try to turn it into penicilin.
Then set up shop and sell it and make a fortune and have a hundrend concumbines massaging me.
(of course it would be offered for free to the have nots. The penicilin, not the concumbines)

[notyoueither]

If the parents killed their child as an honor killing, would you argue that we didn't have the right to impose the "honor killings are wrong" opinion on them?

Assuming you agree that we would have the right to prevent or punish an honor killing, then why wouldn't we have the right to impose the "life-threatening illnesses should be treated" opinion on them? What makes homicide through intentional neglect so much more culturally sacrosanct than homicide though inflicting bodily harm?

From what I've read in this particular case there's also an element of choice of the child involved. Don't know too many specifics though.

[molly bloom]

Remove the historically oppressed minority from the picture. There have been cases where Charismatic Christians with epileptic children treated the seizures as demonic possession and resorted to increasingly, ah, vigorous exorcisms, sometimes killing the child as a result. Should that, too, be allowed?

If it can be turned into profitable American entertainment, yes.

says regexcellent

[regexcellent]

Don't put words in my mouth. It'd be cool as profitable British entertainment too

[molly bloom]

Don't put words in my mouth.

Do you enjoy provoking projectile vomiting ? Thanks for that entirely unnecessary mental picture.

[Elok]

I'm reading Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday, about traditional (i.e., tribal) societies--the kind that predominated the world for most of human history. Just got to the part about tribal warfare; it turns out it's pretty damn brutal. In terms of percentage of the total population killed, the death toll from stone-age warfare dwarfs the toll of WWII, largely because the wars in question never really end, allow for no distinction between "soldiers" and "civilians," and observe no rules of engagement. I'd read similar things before (Empire of the Summer Moon, about the Comanche), but the disparity is staggering. Russia and Germany lost about .15% of their population per year, averaged out, to war during the twentieth century. The Aztecs lost .25% in the century before Columbus. With tribal societies, you're looking at full percentage points, pretty much all the time.

This is what we interrupted, when we conquered the Americas: a state of constant retaliatory raids punctuated by occasional massacres. Not for all of the Americas, but most of the Plains Indians, for example, literally spent their whole lives killing each other, and the torture and gang-rape of captured enemies was not only allowed, but expected. This is not to say, "oh, they're stupid savages,"--we essentially did to them what many of them did to each other routinely, only much more effectively because of our superior technology. But when we wax nostalgic for some mythically idyllic past of purity and harmony (in films like Avatar), or let our guilt prod us into sentimentalizing barbarism--who are we to say that letting children die is not just as valid and beautiful as saving their lives?--we are worshiping a lie, and creating further victims.

(I also sometimes wonder if the talk in the court of Spain in 1520 was much different from how we talked about Afghanistan in 2002: "They do WHAT to each other? We have a moral obligation to put a stop to this!")

[ricketyclik]

Intentional homicide rates


Incarceration rates

[Lorizael]

So if you want to get away with murder, go to Africa?

[ricketyclik]

I just thought they were OK illustrations of where people are meanest to each other. But yes, if you want to get away with murder, go to Africa

[Elok]

I think the war in the Congo--don't know if they've ended it yet, probably not--is essentially a tribal war, only with modern weapons and technology. The mass rape/torture/mutilation, endless reprisal raids, belief in war magic, etc. are certainly very similar to what I read about the Comanche.

[Elok]

Re: OP, the wife argued that cancer treatments don't so much "cure" cancer as "increase your likelihood of survival for the next five or so years, at high cost," that treatment for kids' cancer is sometimes particularly brutal and of uncertain efficacy, and parents should be allowed to say "I'm not going to put my daughter through that hell so she can go a couple of years before the cancer comes back and we do it all over again. Let her have her time in peace." I don't know that I disagree, and we can't be sure that the lady in this article wasn't thinking similar things, the slippery willow bark BS being her way of "what the hell, it won't make things any worse." The respect-for-bad-science point is still rubbish, though.