Friday News Roundup: Religion STILL on the Run
My colleague Rachel wrote a great post the other day about Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old whose family wants to treat his cancer with natural remedies rather than chemotherapy. When the court system ground its gears into action to compel Daniel’s parents to allow the chemo, she took him and fled.
Unsurprisingly, this has generated no small amount of press attention, along with a lot of analysis about the family’s motivations and whether it’s indicative of a greater issue for the medical community. More on the Hauser case along with some of the week’s other most interesting tidbits below the jump.
- Are parents using religion to hide from grim reality? (Miami Herald – some interesting and shockingly civil discussion starting up in the comments. Okay, mostly civil.)
- Medicine, religion collide in chemo refusal (USA Today)
- Experts say case of missing teen represents larger problem (Religion News Service)
And saddest of all: Dad in chemo dispute pleads for son’s return (AP).
In other health care-related news, learn how a Mongolian shaman and a horse helped one boy’s autism, or how religious attitudes affect suicide risk among the mentally ill.
And in case you don’t have any plans for the holiday weekend (at least, holiday weekend for those of us in the U.S.), here’s a little more reading to tide you over:
- And a really interesting (and less depressing) read at Brave new Traveler: Holy Undercurrent: How religion shapes cultures worldwide. A wake up for anyone who thought that religion was just a sub-element of culture.
Happy weekending!