When faith and medicine collide
Any nurse can walk into a bad situation. The one
Luanne Linnard-Palmer can’t forget came as she readied a little boy for a
blood transfusion only to be told by his mother “You know you’re
damning his soul to hell!”
Any nurse can walk into a bad situation. The one
Luanne Linnard-Palmer can’t forget came as she readied a little boy for a
blood transfusion only to be told by his mother “You know you’re damning his soul to
hell!”
The child’s mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, a faith that rejects blood transfusions. Her son had sickle cell anemia and had become extremely weak.
“It blew me away,” Linnard-Palmer recalls years later. “I worried not only about my own reaction but what was going to happen to this child with a lifelong disease.”
The incident planted the seeds for a newly published book by the California nurse…The challenges she recounts are both religious and cultural.
“Over and over I see people who say they won’t consent until they speak to a minister or have a laying-on of hands,” she added, causing delays in treatment but not necessarily refusals.
It’s astounding, it’s confounding, how many of those who invoke the safety of children as a motto to guide politics and life — also end up condemning children to death and disease to satisfy their dependence on religion.
The child’s mother was a Jehovah’s Witness, a faith that rejects blood transfusions. Her son had sickle cell anemia and had become extremely weak.
“It blew me away,” Linnard-Palmer recalls years later. “I worried not only about my own reaction but what was going to happen to this child with a lifelong disease.”
The incident planted the seeds for a newly published book by the California nurse…The challenges she recounts are both religious and cultural.
“Over and over I see people who say they won’t consent until they speak to a minister or have a laying-on of hands,” she added, causing delays in treatment but not necessarily refusals.
It’s astounding, it’s confounding, how many of those who invoke the safety of children as a motto to guide politics and life — also end up condemning children to death and disease to satisfy their dependence on religion.
Posted: Wed - December 27, 2006 at 06:23 AM