A 15-year-old Canadian boy suffering from severe effects of insulin-dependent diabetes died because his religious parents refused to seek proper medical care, the CBC reports.
Emil and Rodica Radita are on trial for first-degree murder after their son, Alex, died in 2013 from what prosecutors say were the effects of his parents’ refusal to seek medical care and rely on prayer and home treatment instead.
Alex was diagnosed with diabetes as a 3 year old. The condition can be controlled by monitoring blood glucose levels and giving insulin. But his parents believed that doctors caused the condition by treating him for it and left his diabetes untreated.
The result was that by the time Alex was 15, he weighed no more than a 4-year-old.
The boy weighed only 37 pounds at the time of his death. Which is a fact so upsetting that I just had to take a break while typing this.
As if all of this were not troubling enough, the parents of the boy also believe that he was resurrected by their God.
Courtesy of the New York Daily News:
Alex Radita, a diabetic Calgary teenager, was lying dead in his family home for up to 36 hours before his parents called 911, investigators say.
But his parents — who are now on trial for their son’s murder — allegedly told a very different story to friends: Their boy died and was resurrected by God one day before paramedics arrived at their house, and found his emaciated body in a bed.
That bizarre claim surfaced last week, days into the trial of Rodica and Emil Radita, who are charged with first-degree murder in the death of their 15-year-old son.
I often get people here who are upset with the fact that I refer to religion as a "superstition" or that I do not differentiate between the one that they believe in and all of the ones that they themselves "know" are bullshit.
"Stop attacking my religion, it doesn't hurt for people to have faith."
But the fact is that yes quite often it actually DOES hurt somebody.
In fact I would argue that it causes far more harm than people would like to admit, in the form of dumbing down our school systems, forcing their morality onto the communities around them, and selectively choosing certain groups of people for abuse and denial of their basic human rights.
Source http://ift.tt/22LVowu
