POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: mecch on August 23, 2013, 05:38:02 pm
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http://www.poz.com/articles/uk_church_hivmeds_1_24407.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23729684
Some young HIV patients are giving up their medicine after being told by Pentecostal Church pastors to rely on faith in God instead, doctors warn.
Among 10 doctors who said they had encountered the problem in the last five years, 29 of their patients had reported being put under pressure to stop taking medicine and at least 11 had done so.
The doctors and health professionals reported a variety of cases:
Some said they had dealt with parents who felt under pressure to stop giving their young children their HIV medicine - and some had actually done so
Others were breastfeeding mothers with HIV who refused the medicine that would stop the virus being passed onto their babies
Some were young people, making the decision for themselves,
The healthcare workers also reported that some patients had been told by their pastors they would be healed by prayer or by drinking blessed water.
(http://blog.thismagazine.ca/archives/Holy%20Water!.jpg)
(http://www.xomonline.com/Images/snake%20oil%20title.00001.jpg)
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I will always feel a little bad for people whose intellectual capacity is diminished, and are taken advantage of by these people.
Mostly, I am hoping that the neglected/abandoned resources can be well used by people who are going to contribute more to soceity than spreading measles, disease, ignorance and fear.
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Someone told me today that common sense is now considered a super power .
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaqRwFyoGgQ&sns=em
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The Pentecostal pastors must be as dumb, ignorant, and anti-science as their congregation. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they believe their rubbish preachings. It should be criminal. It's an abuse of authority and moral tort.
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The Pentecostal pastors must be as dumb, ignorant, and anti-science as their congregation. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume they believe their rubbish preachings. It should be criminal. It's an abuse of authority and moral tort.
+1
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when i read this thread, I thought about a former member who was quite proud that his church was praying for his healing and for the aids to go away. He didn't think he needed the meds since Jebus was going to take care of him. Of course, he's a "former" member now because jebus doesn't fight HIV the way HAART does ;)
as I do a few times a year ever since we lost this member, I just took at look at that member's old youtube acct and made sure to post about his untimely death on a few of his videos. You wouldn't believe how many people still see his videos, praise him for not taking the meds (oh, how the denialists LOVE his channel), and ask if he's still doing well. It's all very sad on so many levels - because this member is gone :'( and because his videos might still be leading some people to think they don't need HAART.
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Faith-based denialism happens here in America also. An anti-vaxxer megachurch (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/23/vaccine-fearing-texas-megachurch-urges-flock-to-immunize-after-measles-outbreak/) changed its mind about science-based remedies recently.
There are many stories out there of children succumbing to illness because their parents listened to their pastor, not their doctor. Some of the parents have been charged with criminal neglect due to allowing their faith to trump common-sense.
There's an attitude in some religious communities that "you ask for your illness" ie. you bring cancer and other medical challenges upon yourself due to your lack of faith keeping them at bay. If you have to seek help ie. medical services, your faith is weak. The flip side of this is, if a medical professional succeeds in saving your life, all the credit goes to the deity, not the person who gave 12 or more years of their life to learn how to cure you. ::)
This line of thought can be traced back to biblical stories of people's lack of faith causing them to be cursed with some affliction. Hand in hand, are the stories of others being cured of their afflictions due to their overwhelming faith.
Leatherman, if you know the executor of the former member's estate, you should contact them and let them know these videos exist. The executor can get youtube to delete the videos and close the user account.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/pentecostal-minister-hiv_n_3806693.html
Doctor tells the story of one patient.
Something I had ignorantly overlooked, the doctor points out that he suspects the patient is advised to quit treatment BECAUSE he is gay, and thus sinful. In other words, it's a church's way to discriminate, judge, value less, and basically be hateful to gay people in the congregation.