Dx

So John Travolta's son dies and now there's all this hand-wringing and angsty speculation about Scientology and its relationship with psychotropic drugs in particular and its proscription of psychiatric intervention in general.

The public reaction is understandable, I guess, as news of the death of any child can be quite upsetting to any parent or anyone who has ever themselves been a child (not an insignificant demographic, that one). Although, one imagines, not quite so upsetting as it was to the actual parents. So we wish them space.

This comes soon after the death of the anti-HIV=AIDS lady from Not-AIDS, whose own 3-year-old daughter also died from Unsimilar Not-AIDS, not passed to her via breast milk nor at birth.

I'm not really sure what to say about these two sort-of related incidences. The easy reaction involves the requisite forehead slapping, much tsking and brow furrowing, sure.

I keep trying to draw lines to formulate a point, but the ones dividing principle and sociopathy keep getting crossed with the ones between the tyranny of normative behavior and the freedom of the individual to be a douchebag.

For anyone who's ever seen an ABC Afterschool Special or any countless Very Special Episodes of Diff'rent Strokes or Facts of Life or Saved by the Bell or what have you, child abuse is pretty easy to spot: quiet kid, raggedy clothes, big purple perpetual shiner.

But if something medically preventable is wrong with your child, you rationally take in all the data, consult with doctors and choose a course of (in)action outside the prescriptive regiment of treatment that leans toward recovery or at least longer-term survival... Gah. I don't know. When do we start locking up all the Christian Scientists?

The Orange County BMW moms who refuse to get their kids vaccinated as a wholly made-up "principled" stand against either autism or Big Pharma (hoo boy, do you stick it to them by not taking that $4 DPT shot) or just People Telling Them What To Do, that's clearly a different story. Reeducation camps for their children probably wouldn't be the worst thing ever... well, unless you consider large groups of unvaccinated children in a confined area potentially troublesome.

And see, damn, I can't even quite find a way to rationalize the state intervention in even that clear-cut of a case.

I don't know. There's really no answer. You can be as fervent and animated about your reasons for removing children from their parents, but in any case, it's a short walk to Louis XVII.

I've resolved that, in these instances, my response will be reserved to more tsking. I figure if I do it long enough, something good is bound to happen. It usually works on my wife. Well, once...