From Fox News:
A former high-ranking Scientology official who handled the case of a mentally ill member who died under church care (in 1995) ordered the destruction of incriminating evidence to cover up missteps, a newspaper reported Monday.
The church dismisses Rathbun as a bitter former member who inflated his importance. The church said he had been demoted in
2003; he left in 2004.
Rathbun said he initially wanted to go to the state attorney’s office after the 36-year-old’s death, but he instead followed the church’s culture to never admit fault. He and others removed papers from McPherson’s files, including a caretaker’s opinion that the situation was out of control and the patient needed a doctor.
A wrongful death case was settled with McPherson’s family in 2004 under undisclosed terms. And while investigations brought charges of criminal neglect and practicing medicine without a license, they were later dropped when a coroner changed the cause of death to an accident from undetermined.
Church spokesman Tommy Davis……."What he’s (Rathbun) been saying — there’s so many lies you can’t believe anything at this point because he’s been lying so much," …..
On Nov. 18, 1995, she was involved in a traffic accident and soon became frantic, according to the newspaper’s report, stripping off her clothes and walking along the street. She was taken to the hospital, where doctors discussed having her committed for psychiatric evaluation. But Scientology opposes psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.
For 17 days, McPherson was kept in a room where church officials tried to calm, feed and medicate her, keeping logs of what transpired.
The Scientologists feared McPherson would be exposed to psychiatric care there and drove 45 minutes to a hospital where Minkoff was working. Minkoff pronounced her dead upon arrival.
(L)eader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige, struck his subordinates numerous times. The church denied the allegations, saying they are lies in an effort to tarnish Miscavige, who has led the church for more than two decades.
Sometimes it amazes me how much people lie and how honest Scientology is. Wait…..reverse that statement around and we may be closer to the truth.
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BURN THEM TO THE GROUND.
I just saw an SVU about cults today. It was a good episode if wholly depressing.
@PiP: Just about 99% of all SVU episodes are wholly depressing. :-/
Scientolgy is bizzarre… and so are the nut jobs that believe it.
“Scientolgy is bizzarre… and so are the nut jobs that believe it.”
Holy spaghettios! Common ground between atheists and Christians! STOP THE PRESSES!
The fact that scientology does not believe in going to doctors is about the only thing I agree with them on. BTW… Don’t moms practice medicine without a license every day? Sometimes children die of the flu or some other malady before the parents can get them to the hospital, should we put them in jail? Or worse?
It is not that I would never go to doctors, I can sympathize with that specific belief because unless I had a broken bone or somehting easy to fix, every time I went to a doctor, I had to figure out what to do on my own. Setting a bone is a pretty simple concept I may actually try it some day (On my self of course).
On a similar note a customer of mine’s father sold life insurace and did you know that to insure a scientologist costs the same as insuring anyone else? Kind of makes you think. That particular customer had all sorts of fun statistics. His favorite was that poor people die so much sooner than the rest of us. He said something like, “I think we should all do whatever we can to be rich.” Interesting words if all you are interested in is a long life.
Yeah… I kind of like this statement, but I would not start with Scientology.
Joe
“Yeah… I kind of like this statement, but I would not start with Scientology.”
You’d start with doctors, wouldn’t you?
Funny, but no. The idea would be is that if you were “all powerful” what institutions would be the first to go? For example if you were Obama right now, who would be the first organization you would eliminate or remove from federal assistance?
Personally doctors would be the first folks I would “free” from the corrupt bureaucracy which is our government. Instead of spending trillions taking over companies, I would “lose” trillions releasing the medical community from the choke hold of the federal government. I would start with exempting all doctors and hospitals from their burden of income and property tax.
I would also allow certain qualified nurses to get immediate legally binding medical licenses (we all know they are the ones doing the heavy lifting anyway).
Also, I would completely rework any conflicts of interest between drug companies, doctors and hospitals. If a doctor monetarily benefits from prescribing a patient a drug he/she would lose their medical license (Pending a trial by jury of their peers).
As far as what I would eliminate. I would completely suspend ALL federal aid for education. All kinds. The feds should stay out of it (It is that important).
Joe
” For example if you were Obama right now, who would be the first organization you would eliminate or remove from federal assistance?”
I’d defund NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine- aka “woo”) faster than you can spit.
Joe K –
Don’t moms practice medicine without a license every day? Sometimes children die of the flu or some other malady before the parents can get them to the hospital, should we put them in jail? Or worse?
Since you haven’t been around awhile, I’ll be gentle. This kind of comment shows that you just did some drive by reading. This means you didn’t quite grasp what you read.
This wasn’t a case of a kid dying of the flu ect. This was a case of a woman in 17 days of torment with no help from her religion who was with her the whole time. Instead of getting her to the closest medical facility while she was dying right in front of them they drove 45 minutes away and she died while in route. Are you trying to tell me you see nothing criminal in this? Are you trying to say this should be legal?
On a similar note a customer of mine’s father sold life insurace and did you know that to insure a scientologist costs the same as insuring anyone else?
Um, are you aware it is illegal to deny or increase insurance premiums based on religion? It’s a part of the anti-discrimination laws which are all based on Constitutional rights.
Personally doctors would be the first folks I would “free” from the corrupt bureaucracy which is our government.
I’m assuming you are against universal health care then. We finally agree on something! Woo hoo!
Also, I would completely rework any conflicts of interest between drug companies, doctors and hospitals. If a doctor monetarily benefits from prescribing a patient a drug he/she would lose their medical license (Pending a trial by jury of their peers).
What conflict of interest are you talking about? Are you aware that if a doctor monetarily benefits from a pharmaceutical company by prescribing medicine it is already illegal? They can give out samples, give out coupons – but they can’t benefit from it. This is why the doctors are not the ones that fill the prescriptions and why doctors offices cannot have pharmacies along with their practices. Think about it – if they could monetarily benefit don’t you think most doctors would have mini pharmacies in their offices for “convenience” or why they don’t tell their patients they can only go to a specific pharmacy to fill a prescription? Pharmaceutical companies do not get lists of which doctors prescribe what medicine (it’s called doctor patient privacy) they are only told how much is prescribed and where.
Scientology believes that space aliens settled the planet and will come back. Of course, they dont tell you that upfront..they tell you a little at a time until you are brainwashed into believing this crap.
No idea how the space aliens advised them that medication is bad..but..
if you are willing to believe the space alien garbage.. I guess the medication thing makes total sense.
And you wrote, “This wasn’t a case of a kid dying of the flu ect.”
Yes… I know that. My point is that if medicine can’t be practiced without a license, then everyone is suspect. Mothers and grandmothers are going to be on the chopping block sooner than you think. You may not see things like I see them. When the government first started looking to beer drinkers and cigarette smokers for revenue I told all of my friends (I was a little kid at the time) that they will be taxing them for getting food at McDonalds (No one believed me). We really liked McDonalds when we were kids. Now that seems to be becoming a reality. The choices and perspectives we have today on healthcare will have some very serious effects on our childrens choices for their kids. If my daughter wants to treat her kids ADD with diet and vitamins I don’t want my grandchildren to be taken away from her because of her “refusing medical treatment” (Today I heard Doctor say that taking vitamins could have a negative impact on your health). Someone has already threatened someone close to me that is NO WAY afraid of doctors she just didn’t like the practitioner she was seeing. What did the practitioner do? Called DCFS on her. A guy she didn’t know came to her door and threatened her in a way that she describes as “worse than killing me” (Basically he told her if she didn’t allow him to come in and interview her children he would call the cops and have them all taken away her children). All because she didn’t like the doctor she was seeing (The jerk wasn’t fast enough and she went to another doctor). His staff was mad because she made a big stink about it and they called DCFS on her. You most likely won’t be on my side on this unless someone close to you has this happen to them. But I am confident you will be posting some things like this on your blog in the future. These types of situations are becoming more common.
The other stuff you wrote about the “situation” was as if you were there. I just don’t think that was all their was. She was a scientologist. That was her religion. They don’t believe in certain things. Sometimes that may put you at a greater risk for dying young. My God if you don’t think being a Catholic has risks like that try reading a little about the early Church. As a matter of fact, I believe being Catholic is an excellent way to shorten your lifespan. God himself came down on the planet and guess what happened to him? He lived until he was 33.
Doctors these days tell us there are all sorts of health benefits to being on the pill. If it could be medically proven that it would extend your life to be on the pill would you do it? At the expense of not having any children? People who are not Catholic would probably have no issue with this. They would probably get a double dose because they want to live forever. Catholicism is supposed to transcend this love of the temporal that everyone these days seems to be fixated on. If anything being a good person is about suffering in this world (But doing it happily, instead of scheming your way out of it at every opportunity). Some day after we are all dead we will be embarrased as to how many people suffered so many times more than we did and were much happier.
“Um, are you aware it is illegal to deny or increase insurance premiums based on religion? It’s a part of the anti-discrimination laws which are all based on Constitutional rights.”
Yeah… I figured that. Perhaps what I remember about that story I was told was missing some important points. It was quite a while ago that he told me that. I am waiting for him to bring it up again.
“I’m assuming you are against universal health care then. We finally agree on something! Woo hoo! ”
Yeah… We probably agree on a lot. I am still getting my feet wet here. I am currently trying to figure out if whether I can add anything to the back-and-forth that goes on.
“Are you aware that if a doctor monetarily benefits from a pharmaceutical company by prescribing medicine it is already illegal?”
I talked to my accountant about this a few months ago. She has a few doctors as her customers and she would totally agree with you. She can’t find any weird secret kickbacks or anything that would explain why over 50% of Americans are so sick they need to be on prescriptions. I know there is something sinister there, it just hasn’t hit the light of day yet.
Joe
Today I heard Doctor say that taking vitamins could have a negative impact on your health
This is true.
If you generally eat a healthy diet, you get many of the vitamins naturally from the food you eat. If you take vitamins ON TOP of that, you may be getting too much of a certain vitamin and wind up actually poisoning your body, thus doing more harm than good. I wrote this whole essay on it for one of my classes. I wasn’t really sure it was true til I did some research and found out how many vitamins are in the food we eat, and then adding the vitamin supplements can overdose your body on those vitamins which is bad. Of course, if you know you’re deficient in a certain vitamin than you can either improve your diet or take a supplement, but I think improving the diet is the easiest way to go on that one.