Snake-Handling Woman Dies, Family Sues Hospital
by: Rev. DanHere’s some brilliance from Kentucky:
As a woman bitten by a rattlesnake during a church service in London struggled to breathe, hospital employees made derogatory comments about her religious beliefs rather than providing proper care, contributing to her death, a lawsuit charges.
The case arises from the Nov. 5, 2006, death of Linda F. Long, 48, a London homemaker. Police said at the time that Long was handling a yellow timber rattler during a service at East London Holiness Church when the snake bit her on the right cheek.
People bitten by poisonous snakes during religious services sometimes refuse medical treatment. But others at that service quickly took Long to Marymount Medical Center in London.
I’m willing to wager that the alleged “derogatory comments” were along the lines of “Wow, it’s really stupid to play with snakes” and “Why won’t Jesus heal you, don’t you believe?” If you think the Bible is the infallible Word of God, then why go to the doctor?
I can understand it taking some time to admit the woman. I waited for goddamn ever and a day (so it seemed) dealing with insurance paperwork and all the standard hospital CYA stuff the last time I was in the emergency room (with a kidney stone the size of a dime… let’s talk PAIN) and hospitals aren’t around to help people, they’re around to make money for their shareholders. Seriously… that’s what the whole healthcare/insurance bullshit is all about. Doctors don’t really give a fuck about their patients… if they did, it wouldn’t really matter if the patients had health insurance or not.
Making fun of someone for being a lunatic isn’t particularly appropriate if you’re a doctor, but for someone to willingly and intentionally put themselves in a position where they could get bit by a poisonous snake… well, that’s really retarded.
Shouldn’t the family of that woman being suing, uh, GOD or is it impossible to hold God liable for “His Word?” Scripture clearly indicates:
And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
So, God says that it should be ok to play with snakes and drink poison and this woman picks up a snake, gets bit, and dies. Who’s fault is that? God’s? Was it the woman’s fault; for believing God? Is God a liar? Is the Bible crap?
Pure stupidity run amok.
This bit of the story is also interesting:
Handling snakes in a religious service is a misdemeanor in Kentucky, but police rarely pursue charges because the practice involves a matter of religious freedom and believers are willing participants.
Perhaps the last time believers were charged in Kentucky was in 1988. A judge dismissed the charges against four Knox County church members at the request of the county attorney, who said the law against handling snakes in religious services probably wouldn’t withstand a constitutional challenge.
The county attorney in Bell County filed a complaint against a snake-handling preacher in 1995 after a woman was bitten at a Middlesboro church and died, but a judge refused to issue a summons for the preacher.
It’d be my guess that the woman won’t be charged with a misdemeanor.
I also find this to be interesting (emphasis added):
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for Linda Long’s suffering, loss of ability to earn money and wrongful death; and for Gary Wayne Long’s loss of his wife, as well as for punitive damages.
Earlier in the story:
The case arises from the Nov. 5, 2006, death of Linda F. Long, 48, a London homemaker.
If the hospital decided to pay her current wage for the next 41 years (let’s say she would’ve lived to be 100, assuming the woman didn’t go around drinking poison) then they could settle that part of the suit for $0. Homemakers don’t get paid… how is there any loss of ability to earn money? That sure sounds like lawyer-jackassery (aka “greed.”)
The bottom line is: don’t fuck around with poisonous snakes ’cause an invisible man/god said it was ok. Actually… don’t fuck around with poisonous snakes, period!
(h/t J-Walk)
Fascinating stuff! I can’t understand why these people tried to go to the hospital. Where was their Jee-zuhs?
More Snake-Handling Idiocy
Head on over to Outchurched to check out Rev. Dan’s great post on the good ole Kentucky snake-handling…
The woman was stupid and yes the Government should step in when children are involved.You see the people who brought her in to get
treated are speculating on what happened and people that call and
defend this church are speculating also You are free to be stupid
this is a free country
> You are free to be stupid
That’s one of my most treasured rights! Praises be to the Founding Fathers.
If I’m playing with fireworks and blow off my arm then that’s not anybody else’s fault.
If I’m playing with a plugged-in lamp while lounging in the bathtub and electrocute myself then that’s not anybody else’s fault.
If I’m playing with poisonous snakes and I get bit then it’s not anybody else’s fault either.
Yes Barbara, everyone is free to be stupid, but when they start trying to make others PAY for their stupidity, that’s where the line is.
@DJ: Does this mean that you don’t think I should ever charge for Outchurched? ie.- make others pay for my stupidity? ;)
And who is suing the snake?
“If you think the Bible is the infallible Word of God, then why go to the doctor?”
Presumably because they hope that ‘God’ will act through the doctor to intervene for the woman’s delusional behavior. However, emergency room physicians treat the results of all manner of truly stupid behavior, so it seems a bit unlikely that the alleged derogatory comments were so bad as these litigious nutbars are claiming.
Even if the doctor called the woman every derogatory name in the book, it’s not malpractice unless the medical treatment was not up to standard.
Of course, the regular rules of jurisprudence don’t seem to apply when ‘God’ is involved. It appears that ‘God’ does not influence medical outcomes, but that America judges might accept baksheesh.
> And who is suing the snake?
And who is suing the church for endangering human lives? According to the article snake-handling is illegal (misdemeanor) in Kentucky.
(Nice one, btw!) :)
> Presumably because they hope that ‘God’ will act through the
> doctor to intervene for the woman’s delusional behavior.
That’s how Evangelical Charismatics frequently view doctors… God gives the Doctor knowledge (through medical schools) and Insight to do the job, and that hospitals, etc., are a gift of God’s Grace towards everyone.
Apparently God did this all through human effort via Science.
My other point is that the entire snake-handling thing is from one scriptural reference. Evangelicals hold to the Bible being Infallible. If one verse is false, then it should hold that it’s all false.
The snake-handling stuff seems out of context to me. Anybody who willfully handles a snake to “test God” deserves what they get. I’m not happy to see somebody die from stupidity, but it’s hard to evoke empathy for someone who is so willfully detached from reality.
> it’s not malpractice unless the medical treatment was not up
> to standard.
The bits about the doctor not inserting a breathing tube might be relevant?
> Doctors don’t really give a fuck about their patients
This is a major over-generalization, but it sure seems this way… though I’ve been lucky and getting good ones lately. :)
“My wife was stupid. Pay me!”
The only thing worse than a retard is a greedy retard with a feral lawyer. The hospital’s defense should be that this woman was brain-dead long before she showed up on their doorstep. The only thing I find regretable about this incident is that she is old enough to have most probably spawned before removing her mentally defective self from the gene pool.
I also have a problem with this: A believer is supposed to bow and scrape, and praise and worship (and pay), but if that believer is participating in an act of faith that either backfires or doesn’t pan out, they were “testing” Gawd. Pfui! You get the same result from testing a dead battery. ‘Aint nothing there! Gawd didn’t get mad because he was being “tested”, and wave his magic penis and cause the snake to bite that woman, it’s the nature of the beast.
[…] Handle a Poisonous Snake, Get Bit, Die. Big Surprise. Posted on November 12, 2007 by Cory Tucholski My good friend Jeff Haws, as well as Rev. Dan from OutChurched and VJack from Atheist Revolution have posted on this little news item about Christians handling snakes. With this seemingly insignificant news item gathering a firestorm of attention from atheists, I thought it would be a good idea to address the issue from a Biblical perspective. […]
Yes, how funny that the believer “done got bit.” but this article left out some important bits from the original story. For instance:
and
We may view what she did and how she came to be bitten by a rattlesnake as ironic, funny, inevitable, or whatever, and the hospital staff is certainly entitled to think likewise. However, when it comes to treating a rattlesnake bite, the hospital staff had a duty to care for her as they would any other patient and to provide adequate treatment. Whatever the doctor’s personal feelings about this woman, failing to address her breathing difficulties, if true, is inexcusable, and from the sound of it, this may well be one of those times when a lawsuit is absolutely warranted. Do we really want doctors deciding which patients deserve treatment based on their personal beliefs?
How many of you laugh when a pharmacist refuses to fill a birth-control prescription because they disagree with the patient’s religious beliefs? Should doctors delay treatment of the attempted suicide? Or stand around and make derogatory comments about an accident victim who wasn’t wearing her seatbelt?
If the hospital was negligent then they’re obviously going to be held responsible. However, it sure looks like the family is demonstrating an amazing level of chutzpah.
There’s a major difference between a suicide attempt or not wearing a seatbelt and intentionally playing with deadly snakes. Suicide attempts are desperate acts, typically involving someone who doesn’t see any other way to alleviate the pain of day-to-day living. It’s really disingenuous to put somebody who didn’t wear a seatbelt in the same category as someone who willfully toys with extremely dangerous animals.
Pharmacists who won’t fill prescriptions based on their religious preferences should find jobs doing something which won’t put them in a position to discriminate against others (or compromise themselves). If they’re not filling prescriptions they’re not doing their job… they’re not doctors. Refuse and sanitation work seems like a better career path for those folks than allowing them to remain in a care provider’s role and allowing them to jeapardize someone else’s health care.
The woman definitely was treated, and the matter of the tube being inserted was the call of the doctor on duty. Perhaps he felt that putting the tube in would delay the woman’s treatment (ie.- delay getting her shipped to the hospital in Lexington) and would jeapordize her recovery. Whether that’s negligence is up to the court to decide, not you or me.
It’s still open season on stupidity… and playing with deadly snakes is definitely moronic.
While I agree with the obviousy stupidity of this woman and her snakes, I must take exception to the above statement.
If a doctor took non-paying patients, he would soon find himself inundated by patients with no means to pay for the expenses of running an office. Being a doctor is a business, just like being a plumber. It costs money to run that business.
Bear in mind that it is somewhat ironic that you laugh at this woman for being stupid while at the same time make the idiotic inference that things you really need should be free to you. There’s a reason that the first chapter of most Economics 101 texts is “Supply and Demand.”
While I agree with the obviousy stupidity of this woman and her snakes, I must take exception to the above statement.
If a doctor took non-paying patients, he would soon find himself inundated with no means to pay for the expenses of running an office. Being a doctor is a business, just like being a plumber. It costs money to run that business.
Bear in mind that it is somewhat ironic that you laugh at this woman for being stupid while at the same time make the idiotic inference that things you really need should be free to you. There’s a reason that the first chapter of most Economics 101 texts is “Supply and Demand.”
Overstated and overgeneralized, yes… However you don’t see me playing with snakes, so that makes me an idiot?
> idiotic inference that things you really need should be free to you.
Yes, I think healthcare should be “free” (meaning paid for through taxes) and available for all. I think that’s about as far from idiotic as one can get without re-creating the current privatized healthcare system.
Thanks for your comment, we’ve had a lack of smug assholes ’round here lately, and frankly it was getting boring.