Christie Blatchford: Evangelical Christianity and aboriginal healing come together to battle transparency and accountability | National Post

Christie Blatchford on Makayla and her family’s decision to stop conventional treatment. I have sympathy with their situation; chemo and related treatments are brutal, and treatment success is generally measured only by 5 year remission rates. However, putting one’s faith in prayer and non-traditional treatments will most likely condemn Makayla to death:

The issues that ought to have been central to the correctness of those decisions — was this little girl capable of making her own decision, and she may well have been, and if not, were her parents acting in her best interests? – were never fully explored.

The authorities effectively looked away. As the result, Makayla is both receiving treatment from aboriginal healers at Six Nations, a reserve near her own, and counting on Jesus – the efficacy of both much in doubt except to fervent believers.

Indeed, if it’s difficult to reconstruct from public reports which came first in the little girl’s story – her religiosity or her aboriginal culture – it’s less tricky to establish which had the greater impact.

Christie Blatchford: Evangelical Christianity and aboriginal healing come together to battle transparency and accountability | National Post.