The trial of a couple accused of the manslaughter of their daughter by gross criminal negligence continues before an Australian court.
Homeopath Thomas Sam, 42, and his 36-year-old wife Manju have pleaded not guilty to the death of Gloria Thomas, their 9-month-old daughter. According to the Brisbane Times:
Gloria was not taken to the emergency department of the Sydney Children’s Hospital until her skin was weeping, her body malnourished and her corneas melting, the court heard.
Prior to this, it is alleged that Manju took Gloria to India against the advice of a paediatrician, who wanted her to see another specialist. Once there, it is said that she ignored the creams doctors prescribed for Gloria’s eczema, instead administering homeopathic drops.
Once Thomas had joined them for his brother’s wedding, the prosecution claims that the couple continued to administer homeopathic remedies despite Gloria’s deteriorating condition. However, Manju did not extend this treatment to herself when she developed extreme abdominal pain shortly before the wedding, going instead to a conventional hospital where she was diagnosed with gallstones.
Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi stated:
The Crown case is that they put their social obligations well ahead of any concern for Gloria’s wellbeing.
Gloria’s eczema was so bad that passengers on the plane back to Australia thought she was suffering from burns or was covered in tumours, and was in inconsolable pain. Despite this, it took eight days for her parents to take her to Sydney Children’s Hospital, where she succumbed to sepsis three days later.
According to the Australian Daily Telegraph:
Forensic pathologist Ella Sugo has told a NSW Supreme Court jury she had to get advice from an expert in third world malnourishment when she put together her report on Gloria because she had never seen, and has never seen since, a child in such bad condition.
The defence argues that the first-time mother had been “badly let down” by a Sydney paediatrician, and that the parents should not be found guilty because they came from a culture were homeopaths were on equal footing with conventional doctors.
However, Thomas allegedly told police in an interview that he failed his daughter by disregarding conventional medicine and pursuing alternatives:
I could have done better. I should have taken better care of Gloria.
The pair face up to twenty-five years in prison if found guilty.
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14 responses
I’d just shoot them.
So go ahead and shoot them. As for me, I dislike this involvement with other peoples’ business. A damn good case could be made for pretty much everyone fucking up their kids in a million and one ways - I say that these are their kids whom they presumably care about and it’s no stranger’s business. Oh, but you’re a do-gooder are ya? You just want to save the life of a suffering and dieing kid? Sure you are. That’s probably why you’re murdering children by the dozens right now as you wear unnecessary clothes, eat unnecessary foods and own an unnecessary computer, etc. - all on money that could save the lives of suffering and dieing children.
Stop playing cowboy on the web Davey. Spend a few days thinking, come up with a philosophy that makes some sense to you and then be willing to die and kill for it, until then stop farting your half-assed homicidal tendencies around the cybersphere. Thank you.
This story demonstrates to us that many people are wholly incompetent and (in some probably useless manner) cautions us against being similarly ignorant regarding matters of high importance to us. Only morons and fascists though see anything individually prescriptive about it.
“Only morons and fascists though see anything individually prescriptive about it.”
I must be a moron then because I see something quite prescriptive about this story. Parents who refuse real medical treatment in favour of quack medicine, and get their children killed as a result, will be prosecuted and hopefully spend a long time in jail.
In the meantime in the USA a mother has been charged guilty of second-degree murder for letting her daughter die of diabetes because she believed prayer would heal her. All the girl needed was insulin and fluids. But the mother didn’t call 911 until after her child was dead. For this she will face up to 25 years in prison.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2009/05/wis-mother-guilty-of-diabetic-daughters-death.html
Homeopathy is about as effective as faith healing.
Wow! “mnuez” is not only a ignorant blowhard, but a coward too!
Why do you hide behind a pseudonym?
(That’s a ‘false name’, for the educationally sub-normal).
I’ll wager that I do not get a coherent response…
Stop playing cowboy on the web coward. Spend a few days thinking.
“I say that these are their kids whom they presumably care about and it’s no stranger’s business.”
Nice sentiment “mnuez”…just stick you head in the sand and leave people to damage their kids…its not your problem is it? What a wonderful attitude. Did you live next door to Josef Fritzl?
the next baby p.
That’s way long enough to have waited for a reply from the motley bullshit-factory calling themselves “mnuez”.
I’m guessing that this terminal wally is in fact a practicing homeopath.
He displays both the requisite absence of morality and degraded intellect to be their prime specimen.
That’s way long enough to have waited for a reply from the motley bullshit-factory calling themselves “mnuez”.
I’m guessing that this terminal wally is in fact a practicing homeopath.
He displays both the requisite absence of morality and degraded intellect to be their prime specimen.
Tragic story - but how is it different to the countless examples one could cite of individuals praying to a God(s) for a miraculous cure, instead of treating their children/themselves with conventional medicine? Homeopathy would seem to be a ‘faith’ cure that simply doesn’t stand up to science, much in the same way all faith based belief systems don’t.
Mr K
I just happened to land in this blog. People generally do not have understanding about any system. Do we eat tablets instead of food?
What is food any way? It has some Botanical Name ? We eat milder herbs a lot to fill our stomach to get the satiated feeling. What is a spinach ? What are the herbs we use to process our food for taste or nutrition ? Homeopathy medicines mostly are taken from plants and according to their strength they are used in small doses and they sure heal the body with proper nutrition to the affected part. Most of the damages are due to malnutrition. The nature has its own laboratory to make different chemicals and keep the goodness of them. The laboratory inside human body wonderfully absorbs such healthy chemicals without inhibition or resistance, only when the dose is proper. But the conventional medicines are strong chemicals which always leave a damage in some sort in some part which is technically called side effects or contra effects. Liver and kidney struggles to deal with such waste disposal. Mostly these medicines counter the symptoms more than dealing with the actual root of the problem. The curing formula of conventional medicine is Disease _ Medicine, but with alternative medicines Disease _ Body _ Medicine. Only if the Human Body allows the cure will take place and also the manifestation of disease also play a role. If the disease : Body management ratio is 40:60 any disease can be cured if it is inverted then curing seems impossible. Surgeries also help only to certain extent. Cancer drugs are more lethal than the disease itself. Dont try to categorise anything which you do not know in full. Go read some real good Anatomy books or Physiology books. At the same time read some good Materia Medica or Botanical Guide books to know the chemical construction of the plant. You will be astonished to know the composition is always C H O but in strange arrangement. Most of the modern medicines are also derived from many plants but researchers see only the active components in the plants considering the disease but nature also has passive components which help to balance the same when absorbed in the body. Herbal treatment is complete wholesome and really scientific. I know most of the Modern Medicines play havoc in major diseases but there is no time tested method to conduct autopsy to fix the medicine or the physician. Believe and Be cured,
Believe and be cured??? The Body has to allow medicine to work??? OK, mate, chuck down a whole bottle of pills and tell yourself not to die! I’ll save you the trouble; it won’t work.
And they wonder why we make fun.
No Zeke, they *don’t* wonder. Wonderment about one’s own failings requires a specific level of consciousness that breaks through the Dunning-Kruger effect.
If any of these fatuous dickheads had managed to break through that mental barrier, they (by definition) would not support the infantile magic nostrums that they do.
Eczema is really so itchy and i cant help but scratch it. Corticosteroid is a heaven sent because it can relieve the itchiness and redness. *
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