Alternative Medicine: Danger or Deliverance
Recently, thirteen-year-old Daniel Hauser from Minnesota, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, refused to have chemotherapy. Instead, he opted to use so-called “alternative medicine” to treat his cancer. He and his parents claimed they had the right to use such treatments because of their religious beliefs. A court battle ensued, resulting in the judge declaring that Daniel was “medically neglected” and ordering him to undergo chemotherapy because he was lacking a “rudimentary understanding at best of the risks and benefits of chemotherapy.” After a failed attempt by his mother to flee with Daniel to Mexico to avoid the court order and instead give her son holistic treatments, they returned to Minnesota. Daniel is currently receiving chemotherapy for his lymphoma.
In another recent news story, the parents of an eleven-year-old girl named Madeline Neumann refused to give their daughter medical treatment because they believed that only God could heal their daughter. Their belief, known as faith healing, is a belief held to varying extents by many Christians and is based on Biblical passages such as Mark 21:23-24, which states, “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Madeline’s parents had a strong enough belief in the power of prayer that they chose not to seek medical assistance even when their daughter was literally dying on the floor. However, prayer failed to have any effect on Madeline and she soon died. Her mother was convicted of second-degree reckless homicide, and her father currently faces the same charges. In response to her conviction, Leilani Neumann issued a statement saying, “Where is the law written that we apparently broke? And someone make sure to tell everyone that this is no more the America we thought it was. Also, please tell them not try to hide it behind ‘Reckless Homicide Charges or Neglect Charges,’ because the real issue is [that] our local and national government is turning more and more anti-God.”
These two cases illustrate a very naive view of the world that far too many of us hold. In Daniel’s case, his parents are now giving him “supplemental” treatment for his lymphoma. They plan on using alternative medicine along with doctor-prescribed chemotherapy, a practice very common among Christians. While many claim that this is acceptable because the patients are receiving some form of medical treatment, this is far from the case. Alternative medicine and prayer need to be held to the same, if not higher, standards of proof as evidence-based medicine requires. As world-renowned scientist and writer Carl Sagan once famously stated, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Both prayer and alternative medicine not only fail to meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, but also flaunt them. This is reason enough to actively discourage praying for the sick to be healed or using pseudoscientific treatments such as naturopathy to augment actual medicine. Failure to discourage these practices creates a culture where beliefs based on wishful thinking are able to thrive, which is at best ineffective and at worst, deadly.
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