Amish living.....

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maratsade wrote:

GabeU, It's definitely an ethical dilemma -- you want to help, but how much do you actually intrude?  They have beliefs, and intruding too much would attack those beliefs, and then you would be out of their sphere and unable to help at all.  I don't envy the position your mother was in. 

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Exactly.  You want to convince them to save their lives, but you can only say so much so as to not, for lack of a better term, scare everyone off.  I didn't envy her position, either, that's for darn sure.  :(  

I hope that overall, the balance was positive, with more people helped than lost.  I  imagine she made a big difference on many lives.

It really is a difficult thing. You know there are way they can be helped, but you also have to respect their decision to reject those remedies on principle.

What I find is more unfortunate, and somewhat objectionable, is that others that don't follow their ways also reject modern methods because they've been huckstered into it.

Raises real ethics questions of whose decision should be respected, and whose are downright criminal.

Do you mean new agers, MarkJFine?  I know a few of those, and their approaches to health can be quite baffling.

new agers, anti-vaccers... not sure what you want to call them. Think it's funny how they'll not trust modern medicine because they think its to prepare them for the alien oil from the X-Files, but they'll feed their kids a steady diet of cheap fast junk food filled with genetically modified who knows what... then wonder why there's a high incidence of autism. It's all backwards.

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MarkJFine wrote:

new agers, anti-vaccers... not sure what you want to call them. Think it's funny how they'll not trust modern medicine because they think its to prepare them for the alien oil from the X-Files, but they'll feed their kids a steady diet of cheap fast junk food filled with genetically modified who knows what... then wonder why there's a high incidence of autism. It's all backwards.

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Ditto on that!  

Well, there are a lot of new agers and anti-vaxxers who are consistent with their behaviour across the board: no vaccines, but also no GMO, for example. I find it all a bit perplexing.

You can't blame them, though, right? That black oil that the X Files warned humanity about is kinda creepy.  :smileylol: :smileylol:

Lol... Point being that there are a tremendous amount of people that will put an insurmountable amount of faith in science fiction and conspiracy theories to the point where it becomes a clear and present danger to society.

It never really bothered me, nor did I really think about it until my wife, who is a teacher in a school that requires each student to be properly immunized (but really looks the other way) became immuno-suppressed from a procedure a year ago. She's also been sick a few times (hospitalized twice) because parents knowingly send their kids to school sick rather than keep them at home, where they belong.

The combination of all these things, not to mention a CDC that won't even bother to deal with real issues for the next 4 years, will eventually be disasterous.

"Point being that there are a tremendous amount of people that will put an insurmountable amount of faith in science fiction and conspiracy theories to the point where it becomes a clear and present danger to society."

I did get the point; I was just joking. :)

I agree it's a serious issue, and looking the other way will backfire.

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maratsade wrote:
I did get the point; I was just joking. :)

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Oh, I know...