Exorcism, The Vatican Death Cult, and Mental Health


'There has always been a stigma attached to mental illness and conditions such as epilepsy, which cause alarming seizures in otherwise healthy individuals. When society did not understand the cause of conditions that science has learned to identify and treat, people turned to religion to cope, and the results were at best scarring for the individual and at worst, deadly.

A young German woman that had suffered seizures all of her life was killed after ten months of exorcisms because her family believed that she was possessed by demons. Denied food and water, subjected to violent rituals, the 23 year old died horribly and needlessly at the hands of people blinded by their own ignorance.

Another epileptic in Pakistan was tortured by a witch doctor after his family asked that he be exorcised of his demons. He was attacked with iron rods and his fingernails pulled out all because he had suffered several seizures. By the time his family decided that he needed medical help, he succumbed to the injuries.

The two cases I’ve cited might easily have come from medieval texts or church records from another century, but they did not. The first case might be familiar to many, for it occurred in 1975. The victim’s name was Anneliese Michel and the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” was based on her case. It was this tragedy that prompted the Roman Catholic Church to offer exorcists medical training in order to distinguish between a medical condition and a demonic possession.

The second case occurred in 2010, and the victim, Asif Qadri sparked a murder investigation, but it was too little too late for him. A father of two whose only crime was epilepsy died miserably because of religious superstition.

The sad fact is that people in the modern world are using exorcism as treatment for epilepsy, schizophrenia, and bi-polar disease. This is not happening in primitive villages in remote places. This is happening in modern Europe, Asia and North America. An east London exorcist told BBC Newsnight in 2012 that demons can “deceive doctors” into treating possession as mental illness.

See the backwards thinking here? 

 The Catholic Church, known for exorcisms, claims to perform the ritual only when the person in question has been cleared of any medical conditions. This is still not acceptable, because it is always a medical condition. The only evil possessing the victim of mental illness or epilepsy are those that deny a person proper medical care in order to partake in a superstitious ritual that has no place in modern society. Outside of Catholic clergy, the people performing exorcisms are being paid thousands in order to abuse a human being.

What does it say about our society when something like this is legal? Vatican approved or not, exorcism involves denying an epileptic medication that could prevent seizures. It involves terrifying a mentally ill person that may already dealing with something frightening within themselves and causing irreparable damage. It involves physical abuse, including beatings, asphyxiation, starvation and methods of torture last seen in Spanish dungeons during the Inquisition. 

The moment a vulnerable person is subjected to this sort of cruelty is the moment that religious rights to mete it out should no longer apply. There is absolutely no justification for this sort of brutality. Until a better effort is made to educate people and it is made illegal, people will continue to suffer and die in the name of nonsense, and the unfair stigma attached to mental illness and other conditions people mistake for demonic possession will remain. 

--Beagle'

Exorcism, The Vatican Death Cult and Mental Health

There has always been a stigma attached to mental illness and conditions such as epilepsy, which cause alarming seizures in otherwise healthy individuals. When society did not understand the cause of conditions that science has learned to identify and treat, people turned to religion to cope, and the results were at best scarring for the individual and at worst, deadly.

A young German woman that had suffered seizures all of her life was killed after ten months of exorcisms because her family believed that she was possessed by demons. Denied food and water, subjected to violent rituals, the 23 year old died horribly and needlessly at the hands of people blinded by their own ignorance.

Another epileptic in Pakistan was tortured by a witch doctor after his family asked that he be exorcised of his demons. He was attacked with iron rods and his fingernails pulled out all because he had suffered several seizures. By the time his family decided that he needed medical help, he succumbed to the injuries.

The two cases I’ve cited might easily have come from medieval texts or church records from another century, but they did not. The first case might be familiar to many, for it occurred in 1975. The victim’s name was Anneliese Michel and the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” was based on her case. It was this tragedy that prompted the Roman Catholic Church to offer exorcists medical training in order to distinguish between a medical condition and a demonic possession.

The second case occurred in 2010, and the victim, Asif Qadri sparked a murder investigation, but it was too little too late for him. A father of two whose only crime was epilepsy died miserably because of religious superstition.

The sad fact is that people in the modern world are using exorcism as treatment for epilepsy, schizophrenia, and bi-polar disease. This is not happening in primitive villages in remote places. This is happening in modern Europe, Asia and North America. An east London exorcist told BBC Newsnight in 2012 that demons can “deceive doctors” into treating possession as mental illness.

See the backwards thinking here?

The Catholic Church, known for exorcisms, claims to perform the ritual only when the person in question has been cleared of any medical conditions. This is still not acceptable, because it is always a medical condition. The only evil possessing the victim of mental illness or epilepsy are those that deny a person proper medical care in order to partake in a superstitious ritual that has no place in modern society. Outside of Catholic clergy, the people performing exorcisms are being paid thousands in order to abuse a human being.

What does it say about our society when something like this is legal? Vatican approved or not, exorcism involves denying an epileptic medication that could prevent seizures. It involves terrifying a mentally ill person that may already dealing with something frightening within themselves and causing irreparable damage. It involves physical abuse, including beatings, asphyxiation, starvation and methods of torture last seen in Spanish dungeons during the Inquisition.

The moment a vulnerable person is subjected to this sort of cruelty is the moment that religious rights to mete it out should no longer apply. There is absolutely no justification for this sort of brutality. Until a better effort is made to educate people and it is made illegal, people will continue to suffer and die in the name of nonsense, and the unfair stigma attached to mental illness and other conditions people mistake for demonic possession will remain.

–Beagle

'There has always been a stigma attached to mental illness and conditions such as epilepsy, which cause alarming seizures in otherwise healthy individuals. When society did not understand the cause of conditions that science has learned to identify and treat, people turned to religion to cope, and the results were at best scarring for the individual and at worst, deadly.

A young German woman that had suffered seizures all of her life was killed after ten months of exorcisms because her family believed that she was possessed by demons. Denied food and water, subjected to violent rituals, the 23 year old died horribly and needlessly at the hands of people blinded by their own ignorance.

Another epileptic in Pakistan was tortured by a witch doctor after his family asked that he be exorcised of his demons. He was attacked with iron rods and his fingernails pulled out all because he had suffered several seizures. By the time his family decided that he needed medical help, he succumbed to the injuries.

The two cases I’ve cited might easily have come from medieval texts or church records from another century, but they did not. The first case might be familiar to many, for it occurred in 1975. The victim’s name was Anneliese Michel and the movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” was based on her case. It was this tragedy that prompted the Roman Catholic Church to offer exorcists medical training in order to distinguish between a medical condition and a demonic possession.

The second case occurred in 2010, and the victim, Asif Qadri sparked a murder investigation, but it was too little too late for him. A father of two whose only crime was epilepsy died miserably because of religious superstition.

The sad fact is that people in the modern world are using exorcism as treatment for epilepsy, schizophrenia, and bi-polar disease. This is not happening in primitive villages in remote places. This is happening in modern Europe, Asia and North America. An east London exorcist told BBC Newsnight in 2012 that demons can “deceive doctors” into treating possession as mental illness.

See the backwards thinking here? 

 The Catholic Church, known for exorcisms, claims to perform the ritual only when the person in question has been cleared of any medical conditions. This is still not acceptable, because it is always a medical condition. The only evil possessing the victim of mental illness or epilepsy are those that deny a person proper medical care in order to partake in a superstitious ritual that has no place in modern society. Outside of Catholic clergy, the people performing exorcisms are being paid thousands in order to abuse a human being.

What does it say about our society when something like this is legal? Vatican approved or not, exorcism involves denying an epileptic medication that could prevent seizures. It involves terrifying a mentally ill person that may already dealing with something frightening within themselves and causing irreparable damage. It involves physical abuse, including beatings, asphyxiation, starvation and methods of torture last seen in Spanish dungeons during the Inquisition. 

The moment a vulnerable person is subjected to this sort of cruelty is the moment that religious rights to mete it out should no longer apply. There is absolutely no justification for this sort of brutality. Until a better effort is made to educate people and it is made illegal, people will continue to suffer and die in the name of nonsense, and the unfair stigma attached to mental illness and other conditions people mistake for demonic possession will remain. 

--Beagle'

7 Reasons Why Religion Is a Form of Mental Illness


7 reasons why religion is a form of mental illness
Article by Sweet  Tea The Southern Skeptic Fairy
I would like to propose that religious beliefs be placed in the DSM as a category of mental illness for the following reasons:-
(1) Hallucinations – the person has invisible friends who (s)he insists are real, and to whom (s)he speaks daily, even though nobody can actually see or hear these friends.
(2) Delusions – the patient believes that the invisible friends have magical powers to make them rich, cure cancer, bring about world peace, and will do so eventually if asked.
(3) Denial/Inability to learn – though the requests for world peace remain unanswered, even after hundreds of years, the patients persist with the praying behaviour, each time expecting different results.
(4) Inability to distinguish fantasy from reality – the beliefs are contingent upon ancient mythology being accepted as historical fact.
(5) Paranoia – the belief that anyone who does not share their supernatural concept of reality is “evil,” “the devil,” “an agent of Satan”.
(6) Emotional abuse – ­ religious concepts such as sin, hell, cause feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and other types of emotional “baggage” which can scar the psyche for life.
(7) Violence – many patients insist that others should share in their delusions, even to the extent of using violence.

Mystery Brain Disease Strikes Women in US


Doctors have been wrestling with a newly discovered illness that attacks mainly young women and looks a lot like psychosis. In Philadelphia, hospitalized women appeared possessed, crying or laughing hysterically one moment and turning catatonic the next. One had seizures and left her arms stuck out in front of her. Finally doctors realized they weren’t crazy—they were suffering from an auto immune disease known as Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis, reports CBS Philadelphia.

Discovered six years ago, the illness strikes the brain with antibodies and causes it to swell—as one doctor explained to two nervous parents: “He told them her brain is on fire,” says a woman who was hospitalized for weeks. “He used those words: ‘Her brain is on fire.'” A spinal fluid test can spot the disease and immunotherapy can treat it, but there is no cure; all patients face possible relapses. Now a former patient is trying to get the word out, explaining that “there could be people in comas right now or people stuck in psych wards that have this disease and aren’t being treated properly.”

Christ-Psychosis


Christ-Psychosis
There is a point where a committed believer becomes so caught up in their religious narrative that they seem to be under a spell and incapable of functioning in the “reality-based community.” The great majority of believers thrive in the real world, where religious belief is encouraged, and it often helps in every facet of life. But beyond that point where the young zealot and older convert often tread lies madness, albeit a (hopefully) temporary state.
I crossed into that abyss a few times as a believer, but luckily I got back out each time. That place does play a sweet siren’s call to a doctrinaire’s ears, promising a full surrender to one’s fantasies of belief.
But it is a dreadful hallucination, inviting the organically healthy into the schizoid’s dream. Isolated, it can be a refuge for the believer, but once foisted on another, the believer either is revealed his folly, or not, and for the latter case, it presents just as psychosis.
Beware not to take your faith too seriously.

Right Wing Conspiracy Thinking and Mind Control | Gunman’s Aunt: Nancy Lanza Talked About Survivalism


Gunman’s Aunt: Nancy Lanza Talked About Survivalism
“Prepping” for the collapse of civilization
According to the aunt of Adam Lanza, Adam’s mother Nancy was a “survivalist.”

“Last time we visited with her in person we talked about prepping and you know, are you ready for what can happen down the line when the economy collapses,” said the gunman’s aunt, Marsha Lanza.

The reporter asked, “Survivalist kind of thing?”

“Yeah,” said Marsha Lanza.

Gun Control: Don’t Fall for the ‘Mental Health’ Diversion


Gun Control: Don’t Fall for the ‘Mental Health’ Diversion
Mental illness is not a significant factor in gun crime
Posted by Charles Johnson

Take a look around the right wing blogs and news sites, and watch Fox News, and you may notice that there are suddenly a lot of conservatives arguing that the real problem that leads to gun violence is mental illness — and that the solution is “better mental health care.”

While it’s true that the US does need better mental health care, your first clue that this is a dishonest diversionary tactic instead of a real argument is that the right wingers parroting it are the very same people normally vehemently opposed to any and all government involvement in health care.

There’s a reason why so many right wingers are using the “mental health” excuse – to distract attention away from the real problem: there are more than 290 MILLION guns in America, almost one for every single man, woman, and child. The right is so in love with gun culture that they’ll even make dishonest arguments that contradict their own values, to pull attention away from this issue.

There is no real evidence that mentally ill people are more likely to commit gun crimes. Columbia University psychiatrist Paul Appelbaum has found that less than 3-5% of American crimes are perpetrated by mentally ill people, and for crimes involving guns the percentages are even lower.

In fact, the mentally ill are far more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators: Focus on Mental Illness in Gun Debate Is Misleading.

Research by John Brekke and Cathy Prindle at the University of Southern California shows that individuals with schizophrenia are more likely to be assaulted by others than to commit violent crimes themselves, Metzl said.

By blaming people who have mental disorders for violent crime, the threats posed to society by a much larger population – the sane – are overlooked.”The focus on so-called mentally ill crime obfuscates awareness of a far more important set of risk predictors of gun violence: substance abuse and past history of violence,” said Metzl, a professor of psychiatry and sociology. “By blaming people who have mental disorders for violent crime, the threats posed to society by a much larger population – the sane – are overlooked.”

One possible explanation for the tendency to blame mental illness for violent crimes is the fact that the debate around gun control has become so politicized that bringing up mental illness is one of the few ways to even talk about the issue, Metzl said.

For the right, this has become a way to confuse and obfuscate the issue, in order to hang on to their precious, precious guns.

Schizophrenia | The Disease of the Christian Mind


Schizophrenia: The Disease of the Christian Mind?

Posted by Fed Up American

People diagnosed with schizophrenia suffer from problems with their thought processes. These lead to hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, and unusual speech or behavior. Symptoms affect the ability to interact with others, and often people with schizophrenia withdraw from the outside world.

Q. What’s the difference between a Christian and a schizophrenic?

A. One person hears voices and is convinced their thoughts and actions are known to some outside power.

They think the world was designed and created for them and that they are central to everything that goes on and they are sure they are part of a special divine mission.

They believe that ordinary everyday events have some special transcendent meaning visible only to them, sometimes speaking in babbling incoherent voices, and they believe supernatural forces are at work to influence their actions.

And the other one, of course, is a schizophrenic.

The Bible is filled with reports of people hearing voices and seeing visions. In the pre-psychiatric world that Jesus allegedly walked upon, these “miracles” were attributed to their God. Combine a superstitious person, which most of the day were, with a psychiatric disorder as serious as schizophrenia and you have a very volatile and dangerous situation.

A dangerous situation that has morphed itself into a monster centuries later. The Christian of the modern day, especially the devout Christian that believes that the voices and visions mentioned in the Bible are real, have accepted the schizophrenia and superstitions of the people of Jesus era.

They even go as far as to sing praises to this fairy tale God of theirs, with arms raised and vacant, glassy stares to the heavens, believing that there is a magical, mystical being that is looking down, approvingly at them.

There is a very big problem with Christian delusions accompanied by auditory and visual hallucinations. They live in a world of make believe that is responsible for centuries of fear, guilt, death and destruction of families. Christian atrocities throughout history include the crusades, the Salem witch trials and various episodes of torture all in the name of the Christian God and mass hallucinations and religious belief.

Politicians have been heavily influenced in basing their legislative decisions, ignoring the separation of church and state, on their religious beliefs and insurance companies have been using the “act of God” clause to get out of paying claims. People have been accepting these things for centuries and need to finally wake up and face reality.

Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness and will require medication for the rest of the patient’s life. They find comfort in church services and fellow Christians that share their same hallucinations and delusions, by their beliefs in things that can never be proven as real. This is a problem because they will revolve their entire lives around a make believe story. They will even go as far as believing that they are superior compared to a non-believer because they feel as though they are chosen or more enlightened.

Schizophrenia is a treatable mental illness and will undoubtedly get worse the longer it goes untreated. Trying to convince a Christian that they are suffering the symptoms is the problem. They don’t believe that they are sick and need medical treatment.

Look at it this way. Let’s suppose that I came to you one day and said that I was enlightened last night by an angel that told me that I will have “life everlasting” by simply believing so. The only condition is that I must always believe, even when evidence points to the contrary, or I will lose my life everlasting “gift.” The belief would be that I discovered that a story of Humpty Dumpty, complete with all the kings’ horses and all the kings’ men, was based on real accounts of a story by Mother Goose. I found these stories to be as real as the story Mother Mary and will not be told anything to the contrary.

Would you not find me as being a mental case?

Frank Zappa On Religion


Frank Zappa On Religion

Or to put it in terms on Bill & Ted – “Be excellent to each other!”

Frank Zappa on Religion

Alzheimer’s Epidemic Looms | Medical Mystery


Alzheimer’s remains medical mystery as epidemic looms

by Mariette le Roux

Agençe France-Presse

As the population ages, finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is increasingly imperative – but there will be a number of hurdles to overcome along the way.


Alzheimer's diseaseAlzheimer’s disease causes two-thirds of dementia cases and instances are expected to increase as the population ages.

Credit: iStockphoto

More than 100 years after it was first caught in the act of decaying a patient’s brain, Alzheimer’s disease remains one of medicine’s greatest challenges as it robs ever more people of their memory and independence.

Researchers make halting progress, reporting small steps forward along with many frustrating setbacks.

And while care for Alzheimer’s sufferers has improved since former U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British fantasy author Terry Pratchett helped lift the stigma, the key workings of the illness remain a riddle.

Alzheimer’s disease causes two-thirds of dementia cases – attacking one in 200 people – and finding a cure has never been more pressing as the world’s population grows and ages.

“There is going to be a tsunami in terms of [cost] burden,” Dean Hartley, director of science initiatives at the U.S. Alzheimer’s Association, said ahead of World Alzheimer’s Day on September 21.

A door to hope slammed last month when drug giants Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson stopped tests of eagerly anticipated therapies that failed in clinical trials.

On September 6, French researchers announced plant extract gingko biloba, widely marketed as a natural Alzheimer’s remedy, did not actually prevent dementia.

Blaming insufficient funding, at least in part, researchers say they still do not know quite what to make of the plaques and tangles that German doctor Alois Alzheimer first spotted in the brain of a dementia patient who died in 1906.

Little follow-up work was done until the 1960s, partly because fewer people were then living to an age when the disease shows up.

Today, the sole drugs shut in our arsenal treat some symptoms but are powerless to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s.

“People are absolutely desperate for medicines – people suffering from the disease, and people close to them,” said Eric Karran, research director at Alzheimer’s Research UK.

“Where we are at the moment is a critical period for this disease,” he added.

“The pharmaceutical industry has had a range of very, very expensive failures. I worry they might be thinking: ‘this is very difficult and we will just have to wait until the science is more evolved’.”

Hartley and Karran said Alzheimer’s received a fraction of the money governments spend on disease research despite being one of the costliest illnesses in terms of suffering and spending.

Costs and complexity

Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) projects the number of people with dementia will rise from 35.6 million in 2010 to 65.7 million by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050.

The cost, including hospital and home care, drugs and clinic visits, is expected to soar some 85% by 2030 from about US$600 billion in 2010 – roughly the GDP of Switzerland.

But money is not the only problem.

The disease is a particularly complicated one to crack, not least because its effect on humans is nigh impossible to replicate in lab animals.

Its slow progression is an added hurdle.

“The disease seems to be present in people’s brains maybe 15 years prior to … suffering symptoms,” said Karran.

Alzheimer’s normally becomes apparent around the age of 70, when family members observe a loved-one becoming forgetful and confused.

“When patients are available to be studied in clinical trials, you are actually looking at a disease that has been going on for 15 years,” by which stage neurons would already have died, said Karran.

Scientists disagree on the respective roles of beta amyloid plaque build-ups and of a protein called tau, which forms tangles inside these brain cells.

Most test therapies have targeted beta amyloids, but some now suggest it is actually tau killing the brain cells.

“We still do not understand the relation between the structural damage and cognitive symptoms exactly,” Dutch neurophysiology PhD student Willem de Haan said.

Researchers are aiming for a treatment that will halt the disease at an early stage – even before the onset of symptoms.

And while they have not succeeded, their work is throwing up some valuable clues along the way.

Already known is that a small percentage of people, more women than men, are genetically predisposed to developing Alzheimer’s. A family history of the disease boosts the risk.

Some studies suggest healthy living may reduce the chances of those people who do not carry Alzheimer’s-related genes of developing the disease.

Diagnostics, too, are improving: new research shows that a simple eye-tracking test and sleep disruption may be early indicators, helping victims make lifestyle choices before the disease steps into higher gear.

The experts believe that if governments, researchers and drug companies work together efficiently, a treatment may be available within 20 years.

But they also warn against giving false hope to desperate people.

“Finding a medicine for a chronic disease is far, far more complicated than, say, putting a man on the Moon,” said Karran

Years After Acid Attack Horror, Suicide Stirs Pakistan


Years After Acid Attack Horror, Suicide Stirs Pakistan

Declan Walsh in the New York Times:

ScreenHunter_06 Apr. 10 11.55

Fakhra Younas went under the surgeon’s knife 38 times, hoping to repair the gruesome damage inflicted by a vengeful Pakistani man who had doused her face in acid a decade earlier, virtually melting her mouth, nose and ears.

The painful medical marathon took place in Rome, a distant city that offered Ms. Younas refuge, the generosity of strangers and a modicum of healing. She found an outlet in writing a memoir and making fearless public appearances.

But while Italian doctors worked on her facial scars, some wounds refused to close.

On March 17, after a decade of pining for Pakistan, a country she loved even though its justice system had failed her terribly, Ms. Younas climbed to the sixth-floor balcony of her apartment building in the southern suburbs of Rome and jumped. She was reported to be 33 years old.

More here.

Jewish Baby Penis Sucking Ritual Infects More Babies


Two More Babies Get Herpes From Haredi Circumcision Penis Sucking Ritual

Bris 2

Two Jewish infants in New Jersey were recently infected with Herpes Simplex Virus 1 from their ritual circumcisers’ use  of the same oral suctioning technique that caused the death of  an infant in New York in September.

Bris 2

Two Jewish babies were admitted to Monmouth Medical Center with genital Herpes Simplex Virus 1 transmitted by metzitzah b’peh, the Forward reported today.

Dr. Margaret Fisher, chair of pediatrics at the hospital and a pediatric  infectious disease specialist said one boy was admitted within the past month within days of his circumcision. The other case is older, she said, within the past year or two. The two infants had genital lesions. Dr. Fischer described the cases as “extremely mild.” The Forward notes that both infants were  successfully treated for 10 days with intravenous anti-viral medication.

Monmouth Medical Center is near Lakewood, N.J., which has a large haredi community and the largest haredi yeshiva in America.

The story also notes that New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo convened a meeting March 12, bringing together state health department officials and haredi leaders. Cuomo’s liaison to the Jewish community, Emily Saltzman, referred the Forward’s questions about the meeting to his press office, which did not respond to multiple messages.

Similar meetings in 2005 and early 2006 resulted in a circumcision protocol issued by the state which suggested mohels rinse their mouths with mouthwash immediately before doing MBP to stop transmission of the virus. The protocol was widely ridiculed by public health and medical professionals and was revoked in 2007 after Governor Pataki left office, The Jewish Week reported last week.

The Forward reports that:

Following public disclosure of the most recent HSV-1 infant, the New York City Health Department’s spokesman, John Kelly, would say only that “the city and health department are working with members of the community to address this issue.” Asked for details about how they are doing so, Kelly stated in an email, “We don’t yet have further details to share.”

That “public disclosure” was actually an exclusive report by the New York Daily News.

The Forward also notes that:

The procedure’s defenders point to the extremely low number of affected children, considering the the high birth rate for Orthodox families and the number of ritual circumcisions that include metzitzah b’peh. Between 10 and 15 children have been admitted to hospitals in the United States, Israel and Canada with the disease in well over a decade.

This is false. The Forward has confused the number of cases we know about with the number of cases that actually occured. For example, it appears to have been unaware of the two Rockland County cases reported by ABC last night. And the Forward also seems to be unaware that there is no mandatory reporting of HSV-1 in New Jersey. Therefore it is impossible to claim that there have been a finite number of cases, “between 10 and 15” admitted to hospitals in the United  States, Israel and Canada in “well over a decade.”

We also have medical opinions that HSV-1 causes various degrees of  brain damage and that the vast majority of those cases are not  noticeable until long after the circumcision, and we have the very  real problem of non-reporting and of covering up of reporting, both of  which clearly happen. If anyone thinks Sha’arei Tzedek Hospital or  Laniado Hospital are accurately reporting the number and severity of MBP  HSV1 cases they get, I’ve got some very fertile land in the Mojave  Desert I’d like to sell you. The same is true for Bnei Brak’s doctors  and hospitals.

The Forward also wrote that the baby’s death was not “attributed to their ritual circumcisers’ use” of MBP, as if that attribution was made in a vacuum. But it wasn’t. The death was “attributed” to MBP by the medical examiner who did an autopsy on the baby and who had complete access to the baby’s medical records. Further, that cause of death is backed by the state’s Department of Health and the city’s Department of Health.

We also know that case was first reported by New York Daily News, which broke the story – and which should have been credited for doing so by the Forward but, oddly, was not. That’s the only reason we know about it. But there could be dozens of other cases of sickened babies, including cases where a MBP-transmitted HSV1 infection or even killed a baby. But we don’t know because the information is kept secret.

How many babies were buried without autopsies after intervention from haredi fixers even though those babies died shortly after MBP? How many MBP-sickened infants were treated without their cases being reported? How many haredi fixers prevented autopsies or convinced a family to treat their sick child outside the normal medical framework?

Babies die from MBP-transmitted HSV-1 infections. Babies are sickened by MBP-transmitted HSV-1 infections. Some of those babies are brain damaged by MBP-transmitted HSV1 infections. We don’t know how many because of medical secrecy laws like HIPAA and because of coverups by mohels, fixers and rabbis – and by doctors and politicians beholden to haredim.

Those are the facts.

And if we want to prevent more needless suffering and death, we must accurately represent them.

You can read the Forward’s report here.