EDITORIAL
Why that death, and not this one?
We’ve all heard by now of the guilty verdict handed down last week to parents of the child who died in Alberta because they provided only natural remedies for his acute, fatal disease. They relied not on a medical doctor but on an advisor on natural cures. The story has criss-crossed the country, appearing on the front page of every media.
One death, one set of parents who were, apparently, not bright enough to know the difference between preventative and modern medicine, one set of friends – fellow church members, it appears – who testified to the parents’ honourable intentions . . . why is this national news?
It is a real tragedy, without doubt, but can we infer that no other child (or anyone, really) died in that same period through mistaken actions of authorities? Don’t we hear, almost every week, horror stories from various parts of the country, including our own Outaouais’ declining health system, tales about mistaken medications or procedures, lack of action, misdiagnosis, and oversights in general? Did any of them make the national news last week?
Complaining about health-care has become as Canadian as complaining about the weather, and as fruitful. The only time bad weather or bad health-care make the news is when there are many victims or particularly unbelievable aspects to the case. But, here, a single death is national?
Even one death is tragic, especially a child’s. But, for a moment, this is not about tragedy or morality. It is about news reporting, and what’s behind it.
So the question is why one death makes national news (despite multiple institutional deaths in the same period). Why was this story spread so thickly by corporate news sources?
The answer may be in our memories of the government’s attempt to “register” natural remedies, herbs, medicinal teas, and so on, several years ago. Following public indignation over such waste of resources, it came out that the Big Pharma corporations were behind the measure. Big Pharma sees a marketing opportunity outside their grasp – and rather than accommodate an alternative source of some remedies, they opted to hammer “natural medicine” into its own corporate model . . . and the public revolted. There may be something different going on in this Alberta case, but it’s hard to see more than plain greed at work.
Natural remedies are effective – for some situations, for some individuals, for some circumstances—but as prevention, not as a front line cure for acute illness. Which parents don’t know this? The Alberta parents, their supporters, plus the naturalist, appear to belong to the same evangelical church. Our diligent national media declined to look into this side of the tale – can’t denigrate religion in any way!
The elements in this news are more complicated than we’re told. Are our fears being manipulated for a commercial agenda? And was religion working its old magic once again? There’s more to this story than we’ve heard, and would that be on purpose?
