Education and ignorance

Good day to you all. Today I ran across some news articles that brought up some very interesting ethical questions.

The first was a article from Scott Hurst who has written an entry for Swift. It raised the question over whether the Anti Vaxx movement should be held responsible for the deaths caused by their rhetoric. He quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who said that "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." And then went on to write, “This should be a warning to Jim, Jenny and the Huffington Post. If they aren't already, they certainly will be responsible for unnecessary and avoidable deaths and disabilities. By giving medical advice they are utterly unqualified to give, their liability will be clear. I hope they're ready, because someday they will be held accountable for "shouting fire".

The second story comes from CNN. It would seem that the mother of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old boy who is refusing treatment for his cancer, has abducted her child and is now had an arrest warrant issued for her. Daniel and his parents stopped chemotherapy after one treatment and opted for "alternative medicines," prompting Brown County authorities to intervene. The cancer is regarded as highly curable with chemotherapy and radiation, but is likely fatal without it. It is very likely that Daniel will die without treatment.

In addition to those there comes the wrenching story of Gloria Thomas, who was born in perfect health in July 2001, and died from a skin infection with malnutrition and eczema so severe that her skin broke every time her parents removed her clothes. The parents, devout doctors of Homeopathy, are standing trial in the an Australian Supreme Court charged with manslaughter by gross criminal negligence after they allegedly resisted the advice of nurses and a doctor to send her to a skin specialist.

The question is, how far should the state go to prevent the deaths caused by our stupidity? How far are we willing to let the government protect us from ourselves? Is it our right to allow our children to kill themselves, as in the case of Daniel Hauser? Is it our right to say what we want, influence people, with misleading information, knowing that it will cause death? Jenny McCarthy has been quoted as saying that it is acceptable that some children will die as we quit all vaccinations.

I do believe that an adult has the right to kill oneself if they so wish. The issue here is that the parents of children are forcing their mislead pseudoscience upon their children often killing them. And now in the case of the Anti Vaxx movement the potential for a public health hazard increases. At what point does the government step in to save the lives of innocent children and elderly who will die from diseases once completely under control?

This brings up an up an interesting question for the scientific, medical, and skeptical. Why do these people disregard the overwhelming scientific data and yet chose to put their faith in untested and often dangerous treatments that very often are fatal. It is obvious that they have lost faith in science. Perhaps we have failed as educators, as a society at teaching what science and scientific thought are. When these people use the argument that science is driven by solely profit or that we evolved from monkeys, obviously have no understanding of what the scientific method or scientific thought are.

It is time to raise the bar. I believe the solution is twofold. Not only do we need to prosecute ignorance at the expense of others but we need step up to the plate in education as well. And not just in the classroom. Every individual can make a difference, by challenging those who don’t understand to find the facts themselves. To open their minds. To seek answers. And to discover the tools that we have to do that. Science and reason.