Sources reported about a doctor who took his patient to Pentecostal church for carrying out an exorcism.
Dr. Thomas O'Brien took the woman for a four-hour-long "testimony" where the exorcism occurred. The accuse has given a conditions on his registration for 18 months after it was lined that he forgot his professional and private boundaries and forced his religious beliefs on the woman.
The GMC heard discovered a patient who was named in Staffordshire. She was prescribed antihypertensive, prescribed antidepressant and analgesic medication. However, the woman stopped consuming the medicines after Dr. O'Brien said that "there is another way".
She said the doctor gave her lifts to a Pentecostal church in Stoke-on-Trent. The doctor suggested the woman that her surgeon is god and she will be cured by god only. The patient claimed that the doctor also provide her with books about the church.
The church is run by the doctor and another person. The exorcism was carried out on January 19. She also disclosed that the doctor strictly suggested her to not to tell her psychiatrist about the meeting as they conduct the devil's work and she will be cursed.
33 comments
Odd. My doctor wears a bracelet with Buddhist symbols on it but has never recommended hours of chanting as opposed to prescribing meds and has never tried to convert me.
The fact that she stopped taking her blood pressure meds in favor of exorcism is frightening. She could die and all this asshole will say is that it's 'god's will'.
Ever heard of the placebo effect?
Belief does something!
Ever heard of the Nocebo effect?
Belief does something!
...... Australian aborigines killed people by pointing the bone. Now if believing that would kill you was the thing that was killing you could believing in a ceremony to remove a curse prevent the death you were experiencing? The immune system apparently responds to "attitude". So can doctors themselves get frustrated by things that just aren't working?
cheers
@ Doubting Thomas
I'm surprised as well. I've only met one genuine Evangelical, my old deputy head teacher. He was the kind that wouldn't let his kids read Harry Potter, a real Happy-Clapper.
That said, there's certainly been more evangelicals in recent years because of immigration from Africa. They're the ones who believe in witches and faith healing over medicine.
@ Phillip-George(c)2013 - just passing
Ever heard of Austin Sprout? Joe Fitzpatrick? Madeline Kara Neumann? Neil Beagley? Jessica Crank? Debra Harrison? Keenan Littlefield?
These are only a few people who have died from foregoing, or being made to forgo, real medicine in favor of faith healing. Most of them died from easily treatable conditions, and many of them were children. The placebo effect did absolutely nothing for them.
Tell the people who grieve for these victims of unrestrained superstition that "belief does something."
What I find frightening is that it happened in Britain. We're used to laughing at American fundies, We don't expect to find it in our own country. Is fundamentalism contagious? And if it is, is there a cure.
Here, go to my church and get an exorcism, but shhhhhhhhh! It's our little secret because I know I'll lose my job if anyone finds out!
Poor woman. And people say religion does no real harm with a straight face.
Dr Shrinker,
even among the mainstream medical community there is enormous debate w.r.t. prostate screening and mammary gland screening.
Have aggressive interventions maimed and killed? Certain surgical interventions and proceedures remain controversial. There are arguments to be made against chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Point is every year tens of thousands of people die after chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Some of them may have gone into a statistically significant level of spontaneous remission had they never been to a doctor at all.
This is fact.
I personally buried one Aunt, My brother in law, and my father. All three had had fully franked mainstream oncology treatments. All died on cue.
cheers
I've got to slow down making posts.
Too many typos
Prostate Cancer screening remains controversial. As many people die with prostate cancer as die from it.
Exorcism might statistically compete well as a treatment - think about it and you might get it. Just might.
@ Mikgof
We have plenty of these idiots here in Australia also. Fundamentalism, in my experience, is simply extreme right wing politics dressed up as religion. Wherever you have extreme right wing politics, you will have fundamentalism.
There used to be a saying many years ago that seems to have disappeared; it went, " Christianity hasn't failed, it just hasn't been properly applied yet." Its parallel with right wing politics is, I think, "Capitalism hasn't failed, it just hasn't been properly applied yet." Which, in my opinion, is why we keep moving further and further to the right. This is why fundamentalism appears to be getting stronger and stronger.
Thirddrop,
In Australia something like 60 cents in every dollar is going into direct or indirect taxes supporting craddle to the grave socialism. You won! You've got it all. Free public housing, single mother pensions, free public health medicaid, abortion on demand government funded, government pension schemes, hundreds of thousands of people on disability pensions, public schools, publically funded family law courts, government television and radio.
And anyone suggesting any alternatives is howled down in all forms of media as a Right Wing Nutjob Extremist. Socialism won. Or where can that government now expand into? What's left. A total takeover of Internet? Perhaps you would make a good moderator of public dialogue for the advancement of political correctness.
@ Phillip-George(c)2013 - just passing
Exorcism?
"Free public housing, single mother pensions, free public health medicaid, abortion on demand government funded, government pension schemes, hundreds of thousands of people on disability pensions, public schools, publically funded family law courts, government television and radio."
My link between extreme right wing politics and fundamentalism demonstrated. Oh, and by the way, Phillip, in Australia it is known as Medicare.
@ Phillip-George(c)2013 - just passing
First of all, I am sorry for your losses. Nothing I have said or say here is intended to ridicule your grief. However, you are really missing the point.
It is true that even the best medical care sometimes fails. Sometimes the best medical practitioners make mistakes. Iatrogenic illnesses are an acknowledged fact and chemo-therapy is nothing short of agonizing.
NONE of that makes superstitious hokum an objectively viable or morally justifiable substitute for real medical treatment. Many medical treatments, such as taking insulin for diabetes, are known to be safe and effective when done properly. To reject such treatment for prayer is idiotic. To force a child to reject such treatment is reprehensible.
Doctor,
most conversations here are going to be an oversimplification. How allopathic medicine was hijacked by pharmaceutical companies subsidizing university teaching hospital research is beyond the scope of one fast moving blog.
A book simply called "Wrong, How experts keep failing us", is selling well on Amazon.
Your presuppositional biases are 1. Miracles don't happen. 2. Materialism can or will explain everything. 3. Spirits and Life after death don't exist. 4. Macromorphic evolution is logical given speciation and microevolution are laboratory science 5. Iatrogenic epidemiological incidence is relatively low and not systemic in some fields 6. Exorcisms have never had benefit.
Some things do not lend themselves well to double blind studies. Eg. Singing out loud in a church - as just one example.
@ Phillip-George(c)2013 - just passing
Allusions to conspiracy theories are not very convincing. Neither are popular books, even those that are "selling well on Amazon." Such books lack the controls and high expectations of peer reviewed journal articles.
What really irritates me though is your misuse of the term "bias." Medical science works far more reliably than magical cures. Asserting that is not "bias." It is acknowledgement of fact.
If you want to believe in miracles, spirits, life after death and the efficacy of exorcisms, that is your choice. If you are a competent adult, you can even put your life on the line by relying on magic instead of medicine. I just hope that when you do, you understand the pitiful rate of success that sorcery has in prolonging human life when compared to science.
And if you want to try and convince other people that sorcery is just as good as science, especially desperate parents who are looking for treatment for their children...let's just say you're going to need something a bit more convincing than a book that is "selling well on Amazon."
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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