Scientology, the Real Culprit

It's bad when one, through their religion, attempts to control the lives of others. A recent example could be the numerous Mormons (and Southern Baptists, I'm sure) who supported Prop 8 and sent money to California to help pass the measure that took away established rights of others.

But to allow one's religion to affect the way you treat your own family, in particular, in the realm of health care for one's children, is beyond my understanding.

From time to time we hear about members of a particular sect refusing to allow their child to have a blood transfusion or chemotherapy, and sometimes there are lawsuits about such incidences.

But now we have 16 year old Jett Travolta who was found unconscious in a bathroom on Friday, and who died, after suffering from a seizure and falling and hitting his head on the bathtub. I have all the sympathy and compassion for his parents and sister regarding the loss of their child, but their wacky statements about his condition in the past leave them and their religion open to criticism.

Before I even go there...the story in yesterday's Birmingham News said:

"Police Superintendent Basil Rahming has said a caretaker found Jett Travolta unconscious in a bathroom late Friday morning and he was later pronounced dead at a Freeport hospital. The youth was last seen entering the bathroom on Thursday, according to Rahming's police statement.

Thursday to late Friday. The same story reported:

"The police left the impression that the boy was unsupervised. No. There were two nannies with him for the entire evening," McDermott told The Associated Press. "They made it seem like he was sent to the condo and nobody checked in on him until the next morning.",

and

""(Jett) was spectacularly supervised," said McDermott...".

Spectacular.

Let's hope that in reality, one person told the police they he or she last saw Jett on Thursday, but that one or both of the nannies had seen him.

Anyway, the parents are blaming his death, in effect, on carpet cleaner, and it seems, blaming his seizures on a disorder for which seizures are not a symptom, Kawasaki Disease . And carpet cleaners are not even proven to cause it.

I saw an interview in which his mother, Kelly Preston said that Jett had symptoms of a rash and high fever as a child, which are symptoms of Kawasaki disease (along with a boatload of other childhood diseases) and only after finding the right doctor were they able to diagnose it. But, most children recover with treatment, and although some develop complications involving the heart, none of those would result in seizures.

All the cable networks have had their experts on, and it seems their is agreement that Jett had some kind of developmental disorder, and autism was mentioned in almost every report.

Jett certainly could have had Kawasaki disease as a child, gotten over it, but unrelated to that, also be autistic. In this case, there would not have been a diagnosis, because Scientologists do not believe in the diagnosis. That is where I have a problem. Kelly Preston once compared treating a kid with autism to treating a kid with chemotherapy without having a diagnosis of cancer.

If they did not accept the diagnosis of autism, they would not learn that children who are autistic are at greater risk for developing a seizure disorder. So they may (or may not) have been treating the seizures, but not with all the tools available. Different meds and other strategies taking autism into account might have done a better job.

I am not picking on John Travolta or Kelly Preston, rather I am picking on their religion. they are under the control of a big ole cult , and were doing what they thought was right.

From the Wikipedia article of Scientology:

Scientologists believe that psychology and psychiatry are destructive and abusive fields and should be abolished.

Scientology believes that we are "thetans" and have extraterrestrial roots but are trapped in our earthly bodies.

Scientology has attempted to legally force search engines such as Google and Yahoo to omit any webpages critical of Scientology from their search engines.

A group called "Anonymous" has protested at Scientology Centers around the world, wearing masks suggestive of "V for Vendetta."



Ok, I'm going to stop here. You get the picture. The more I read the weirder it gets. If I offended anyone, so be it. Maybe it will help them recognize their folly.