Yes, Christian Scientist do not believe in medical treatment, even at a
life or death state. They feel that it is tampering with Gods will. That
God has a plan for us to be born and to die, and it is not for man to
prevent. I have heard of cases, where loved ones are brought to the
hospital to be "taken care of", (ie. someone calles 911 for a nieghbor
who has a heartattack) but not to recieve any actual medical treatment
that might save their lives.
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
http://www.nanoindustries.com
>Curt Adams writes:
>>I do recall a study (sorry, can't find the reference) of Christian
Scientist, who refuse most medical treatment. The study found that the
loss of medical treatment reduced their lifespan about 7 years.
>Let me know if you recall more about the cite.
>>I would suspect that medical care that really makes a difference
probably gets to almost anybody. Added money would mostly go to
optional or speculative
>>treatment; that might well not improve mortality.
>But maybe most treatment is optional or speculative. If so, maybe we
could spend 1/3 what we do now and be just as healthy.
>>It's implausible that the medicine we get (as opposed to additional
treatment we don't normally get) doesn't help. People get things like
appendicitis, pneumonia in the young, and gangrene which were major
risks in the past but >very rarely die of them.
>Sure we are lots healthier now than in the past. The question is how
much credit medicine deserves for that. Lots of other things have
changed besides medicine.
>>> A recent analysis of 5
>>> million Medicare patients, using regional spending variations of a
factor of two (controlling for lots of stuff), found that any mortality
benefit of spending in the last six months of life is less than a one
part in a thousand.
>>That sounds like a biased sample. People who die within six months
are people for whom treatment has failed. If medical treatment works,
they won't show up in the sample. Am I missing something?
>It is a random sample of all Medicare patients. It looks at 5000
hospital regions in the country, and predicts total mortality in each
region from a long list of features, one of which is how much is spent
there in the
>last six months of life. I gave the URL for it - take a look for
yourself:
>http://nberws.nber.org/papers/W6513
>
>
>
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