You have one of my distinctions, but not the other one, which I believe to be the stronger anyway - that on the one hand the JW is refusing the treatment despite knowing it's clinically beneficial, while in the other the conspiracy theory victim is refusing the treatment because they wrongly believe it is clinically harmful. I think that also makes a difference - the difference between informed and misinformed consent.
A patient refusing treatment they think is harmful makes more sense to me than refusing treatment they know is beneficial. The first person may be deceived, but the second may be willfully, knowingly risking their life. I don't see why the first person should have social services intervening in their life and not the second.
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
You have one of my distinctions, but not the other one, which I believe to be the stronger anyway - that on the one hand the JW is refusing the treatment despite knowing it's clinically beneficial, while in the other the conspiracy theory victim is refusing the treatment because they wrongly believe it is clinically harmful. I think that also makes a difference - the difference between informed and misinformed consent.
A patient refusing treatment they think is harmful makes more sense to me than refusing treatment they know is beneficial. The first person may be deceived, but the second may be willfully, knowingly risking their life. I don't see why the first person should have social services intervening in their life and not the second.
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
So, you'd say then that the people who promoted the Gerson theory might share some of the legal blame for the death of the patient who followed their advice, whereas the Elders in Brooklyn don't share any legal blame for the death of someone who refuses a transfusion, because the Elders didn't mislead the patient with false information?
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
There's no plausible evidence to support the Jehovah's Witnesses' position either.
It's a very sad case all around, and I would personally argue more in favour of seeing this as a case of coercive control more than anything else. I don't know how common it is for non-elderly adults being abused by relatives to end in prosecution but I suspect it is quite rare - it is a side of domestic abuse that isn't talked about much.
I would also echo @Arethosemyfeet in terms of talking about the "cosmic right" - a lot of conspiracy theories are based on various forms of bigotry, especially antisemitism (David Icke's lizard people stuff being a prime example). An awful lot of 19th/early 20th century natural living/health and wellness movements have roots in very dodgy stuff - a lot of early vegetarians and their organisations were anti-vax for instance, it's a much older phenomenon than people realise. A lot of current "lefty hippy" (or pseudo lefty anyway) stuff is a direct descendent of said dodgy stuff and a lot has links to white supremacist and eugenicist movements.
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
There's no plausible evidence to support the Jehovah's Witnesses' position either.
I guess the idea is that there's also no evidence AGAINST the JW view, so we can allow more indulgence for a Watchtower believer than for someone following a quack theory which has contradicted by peer-reviewed research.
Which strikes me sort of like the difference between believing in Russell's teapot hovering Jupiter(untestable either way, at least when Russell was writing), and believing in the Loch Ness Monster(proven false by science). Personally, I'm kind of inclined to advantage/dlsadvsntage both about equally in the legal realm.
ISTM that the doctor can only present the evidence to the patient; it is not the doctor's responsibility to teach the patient how to think or how to be skeptical of flimsy evidence. There is a sense in which you could say no consent is informed; we cannot know the inner state of the consent-er. Are they competent to make such a decision? No way of knowing. What are we going to do, give them a cognitive test?
Sometimes we do - but the circumstances regarding that are quite tightly specified. Capacity is presumed, we have to have some specific reason to question it, that would lead us to carry out a capacity assessment (in UK law).
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
There's no plausible evidence to support the Jehovah's Witnesses' position either.
I guess the idea is that there's also no evidence AGAINST the JW view, so we can allow more indulgence for a Watchtower believer than for someone following a quack theory which has contradicted by peer-reviewed research.
Which strikes me sort of like the difference between believing in Russell's teapot hovering Jupiter(untestable either way, at least when Russell was writing), and believing in the Loch Ness Monster(proven false by science). Personally, I'm kind of inclined to advantage/dlsadvsntage both about equally in the legal realm.
As a side note, the Loch Ness Monster has not been proven false by science. I’m not sure it can be, this side of draining Loch Ness somehow (and even then, it would only prove that Nessie wasn’t there now, at the time of draining, not in the past).
Nessie is a tangent but - Loch Ness is big. At it's deepest point it is deeper than the North Sea at its deepest point. It holds more water than all the English and Welsh lakes put together.
I think the biggest argument against is that for there to be a Nessie now, there has to have been a whole family of Nessies in the past. And I don't think there has ever been a sustainable breeding population of Nessies there.
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
There's no plausible evidence to support the Jehovah's Witnesses' position either.
There is no evidence either way. The JWs make their claims based on their interpretation of scripture. I think they're wrong. You think they're wrong. But I can't prove that they're wrong.
This is a completely different situation from something like Gerson therapy, which has been repeatedly proved to be total bollocks.
When someone says "there is no evidence for X", it has a completely different meaning if evidence for X would be obtainable if it existed vs what it means if evidence for or against X cannot be obtained.
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
There's no plausible evidence to support the Jehovah's Witnesses' position either.
There is no evidence either way. The JWs make their claims based on their interpretation of scripture. I think they're wrong. You think they're wrong. But I can't prove that they're wrong.
This is a completely different situation from something like Gerson therapy, which has been repeatedly proved to be total bollocks.
When someone says "there is no evidence for X", it has a completely different meaning if evidence for X would be obtainable if it existed vs what it means if evidence for or against X cannot be obtained.
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
If what you're doing is illegal coercion, I don't see how it can make a difference to the illegality whether your intentions are based in quackery, dogma, or completely accurate medical science.
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
If what you're doing is illegal coercion, I don't see how it can make a difference to the illegality whether your intentions are based in quackery, dogma, or completely accurate medical science.
Well, I can't recall the precise genealogy of this discussion, but I think somewhere along the way someone started arguing that there was, in fact, a distinction of some sort to be made between quacks advising bad medical practices and mystics advising bad medical practices.
I guess I COULD see a distinction between the two at the level of the respective movements' leadership. A quack claiming scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism is arguably somewhere in the vicinity of false-advertising, whereas a Brooklyn Elder is just relying on his own power of office to convince people he's right.
(IOW the quack comes closer to the old "fire in a crowded theater" example that Oliver Wendell Holmes used to justify locking up elderly socialists in World War I. Though as you can probably tell, I personally am somewhat dubious about his line of reasoning in that instance.)
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
I guess part of the answer to that comes down to how comfortable you are with laws that force people to do things that are in direct conflict with their religious beliefs.
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
I guess part of the answer to that comes down to how comfortable you are with laws that force people to do things that are in direct conflict with their religious beliefs.
Well, more precisely for the context of this discussion...
If I have X level of comfort in forcing devotees of quackery to violate their beliefs, is my level of comfort in forcing devotees of a religion to do the same more, less, or equal to X?
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
I would guess that most people on the Ship will see this from a faith standpoint and make what is to them a rational distinction between scientific quackery and religious teaching. In my own experience, a good many people - and that would include close family members - do not make any such distinction.
One other aspect of the case in the OP - when Paloma suffered a cardiac arrest at home, her mother called a friend before calling for an ambulance. When the ambulance got there, her mother had started CPR, which the ambulance crew took over. Her mother then argued, unsuccessfully, against the medics injecting Paloma with adrenalin.
It made no difference to the outcome . The fairly short delay in calling the ambulance, trying to argue against adrenalin, nothing was going to save Paloma's life at that point. She was taken into hospital, put on life support, but died five days later without having regained consciousness at any point.
But when a person is unconscious and can't give consent, informed or otherwise, and their caregiver is acting in accordance with their own conspiracy theories - what then?
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
I would guess that most people on the Ship will see this from a faith standpoint and make what is to them a rational distinction between scientific quackery and religious teaching. In my own experience, a good many people - and that would include close family members - do not make any such distinction.
IMO “illegal coercion” is where the line is drawn - whether the motive is medical misinformation or religious teaching.
One other aspect of the case in the OP - when Paloma suffered a cardiac arrest at home, her mother called a friend before calling for an ambulance. When the ambulance got there, her mother had started CPR, which the ambulance crew took over. Her mother then argued, unsuccessfully, against the medics injecting Paloma with adrenalin.
It made no difference to the outcome . The fairly short delay in calling the ambulance, trying to argue against adrenalin, nothing was going to save Paloma's life at that point. She was taken into hospital, put on life support, but died five days later without having regained consciousness at any point.
But when a person is unconscious and can't give consent, informed or otherwise, and their caregiver is acting in accordance with their own conspiracy theories - what then?
If the caregiver is legally required to perform certain life-saving procedures as desired by the patient, and doesn't do so, whether because they are following quack science, or following religious dogma, or because they just want to keep watching their favorite soap opera on TV, and the patient is harmed as a result, then the caregiver should be criminally charged.
Not sure what the law on that is in England. But, in any case, the main issue in the Paloma case seems to be not the denial of services, but the persuasion of the patient to refuse the services in the first place.
At a bare minimum, I suggest that the deceased woman's mother should not have custody of any children at all. I actually favor prosecution of some sort.
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
I guess part of the answer to that comes down to how comfortable you are with laws that force people to do things that are in direct conflict with their religious beliefs.
There is another issue which is that different places categorise religions differently. UK law only recognise religions that involve worship of a deity - legally speaking, if there's no deity worship it's not a religion (which is why Scientology is not legally a religion in the UK). Iirc "deeply-held belief" doesn't come with all of the legal criteria that religion does in terms of protected categories.
UK law only recognise religions that involve worship of a deity - legally speaking, if there's no deity worship it's not a religion (which is why Scientology is not legally a religion in the UK). Iirc "deeply-held belief" doesn't come with all of the legal criteria that religion does in terms of protected categories.
Where does that leave Buddhists and Buddhist temples from a legal standpoint?
UK law only recognise religions that involve worship of a deity - legally speaking, if there's no deity worship it's not a religion (which is why Scientology is not legally a religion in the UK). Iirc "deeply-held belief" doesn't come with all of the legal criteria that religion does in terms of protected categories.
Where does that leave Buddhists and Buddhist temples from a legal standpoint?
Not to mention non-theistic Unitarians. And do UFO cults get in, or does the deity have to be non-material?
UK law only recognise religions that involve worship of a deity - legally speaking, if there's no deity worship it's not a religion (which is why Scientology is not legally a religion in the UK). Iirc "deeply-held belief" doesn't come with all of the legal criteria that religion does in terms of protected categories.
Where does that leave Buddhists and Buddhist temples from a legal standpoint?
I don't know, but some streams of Buddhism are theistic so that would mean that Buddhism as a whole is covered - it wouldn't depend on individual beliefs to count as a religion or not. Unitarianism in the UK has historically been Christian Unitarianism specifically so is recognised as a Christian denomination. I don't know how UFO cults would fit into that legal framework.
UK law only recognise religions that involve worship of a deity - legally speaking, if there's no deity worship it's not a religion (which is why Scientology is not legally a religion in the UK). Iirc "deeply-held belief" doesn't come with all of the legal criteria that religion does in terms of protected categories.
Where does that leave Buddhists and Buddhist temples from a legal standpoint?
I don't know, but some streams of Buddhism are theistic so that would mean that Buddhism as a whole is covered - it wouldn't depend on individual beliefs to count as a religion or not.
But many schools of Buddhism aren’t theistic, and even the ones that are don’t necessarily worship a deity as Abrahamic religions would understand that concept. It’s not a matter of individual beliefs. It’s more like the equivalent of denominational differences, with the oldest denominations being nontheistic, and with deities being at best ancillary in most denominations.
I'm sure there are better informed people who could weigh in on this, but I'm not sure it's true that in the UK religion only applies to worship of a deity. The Equality Act 2010 says that "religion means any religion" and "belief means any religious or philosophical belief." A religion "must have a clear structure and belief system" but, so far as I can see, there's no specific doctrines that are required. The court does have discretion to decide whether something counts as a religion for the purposes of the Act.
What you may be referring to is R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal (1970), which refused to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology on the grounds that there was no worship (i.e. submission to a higher power) in Scientology.
I suspect it's a case of English and Welsh law being a hodge-podge of case-by-case decisions with no overarching rationale!
What you may be referring to is R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal (1970), which refused to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology on the grounds that there was no worship (i.e. submission to a higher power) in Scientology.
So, who was taking whom to court in a case that's the Crown against the Registrar General?
The Equality Act 2010 says that "religion means any religion" and "belief means any religious or philosophical belief." A religion "must have a clear structure and belief system" but, so far as I can see, there's no specific doctrines that are required. The court does have discretion to decide whether something counts as a religion for the purposes of the Act.
What you may be referring to is R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal (1970), which refused to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology on the grounds that there was no worship (i.e. submission to a higher power) in Scientology.
When you're talking about religion under UK law, you need to work out *which* law you're talking about, and also consider whether it's English or Scottish (or other) law.
Case law
What counts as a place of worship has been the subject of litigation. An application by the Church of Scientology to have a chapel registered at Saint Hill Manor was rejected by the Registrar General in 1967. This rejection was upheld by the Court of Appeal in the case of R v Registrar General, ex p Segerdal. In 2013, the UK Supreme Court overturned Segerdal in the case of R (on the application of Hodkin and another) v Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages, which concerned whether a marriage could be conducted at a Scientology property in London. Following the Hodkin decision, there is no longer a requirement of theistic belief in order to qualify as being a place of religious worship for the purpose of registration under the Act.
While the Charities Act, for example, is likely to be relevant for other issues relating to faith groups.
I think Alan has a good question, though not really in line with the thread. If Robinson Crusoe is alone on his island for years, is he cut off from religion?
What you may be referring to is R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal (1970), which refused to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology on the grounds that there was no worship (i.e. submission to a higher power) in Scientology.
So, who was taking whom to court in a case that's the Crown against the Registrar General?
I see this kind of thing often in the style of cause for UK public law decisions - to this Canadian it makes it look like the government is suing itself which obviously is not what is really happening. Is there a quick and easy explanation that someone can help out with?
What you may be referring to is R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal (1970), which refused to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology on the grounds that there was no worship (i.e. submission to a higher power) in Scientology.
So, who was taking whom to court in a case that's the Crown against the Registrar General?
I see this kind of thing often in the style of cause for UK public law decisions - to this Canadian it makes it look like the government is suing itself which obviously is not what is really happening. Is there a quick and easy explanation that someone can help out with?
Thanks for encapsulating the reasons for my confusion.
It’s the older form for judicial review cases where technically it is the Crown which calls for the review, but in practice it is the named ex parte person who is seeking it. The newer form would be R (on the application of Segerdal) v Registrar General.
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
If what you're doing is illegal coercion, I don't see how it can make a difference to the illegality whether your intentions are based in quackery, dogma, or completely accurate medical science.
Well, I can't recall the precise genealogy of this discussion, but I think somewhere along the way someone started arguing that there was, in fact, a distinction of some sort to be made between quacks advising bad medical practices and mystics advising bad medical practices.
There's two separate questions here. If you're exerting coercive control over someone, that's illegal. Whether or not a reasonable objective observer would believe that you intended this for their net benefit, or whether it actually was to their net benefit, isn't relevant.
If you're not exerting illegal control over another person, but "merely" providing assistance, advice, and counsel, then there are questions in this thread about what responsibility you have to not misrepresent yourself as having expertise you don't have, for example.
Comments
The JW refuses a blood transfusion because they "know" that it is harmful in a spiritual sense. They will happily agree that standard medical opinion is correct, but they think the spiritual outcomes are more important.
The crank, on the other hand, is just wronger than a wrong thing. We're not talking about positions where there's a case to be made for different kinds of treatment, and reasonable people might come to a different opinion, but about a case where there's no plausible evidence to support the crank position at all. Gerson, for example, is measurably wrong. All of the actual studies consistently said "this does not work".
So, you'd say then that the people who promoted the Gerson theory might share some of the legal blame for the death of the patient who followed their advice, whereas the Elders in Brooklyn don't share any legal blame for the death of someone who refuses a transfusion, because the Elders didn't mislead the patient with false information?
There's no plausible evidence to support the Jehovah's Witnesses' position either.
I would also echo @Arethosemyfeet in terms of talking about the "cosmic right" - a lot of conspiracy theories are based on various forms of bigotry, especially antisemitism (David Icke's lizard people stuff being a prime example). An awful lot of 19th/early 20th century natural living/health and wellness movements have roots in very dodgy stuff - a lot of early vegetarians and their organisations were anti-vax for instance, it's a much older phenomenon than people realise. A lot of current "lefty hippy" (or pseudo lefty anyway) stuff is a direct descendent of said dodgy stuff and a lot has links to white supremacist and eugenicist movements.
I guess the idea is that there's also no evidence AGAINST the JW view, so we can allow more indulgence for a Watchtower believer than for someone following a quack theory which has contradicted by peer-reviewed research.
Which strikes me sort of like the difference between believing in Russell's teapot hovering Jupiter(untestable either way, at least when Russell was writing), and believing in the Loch Ness Monster(proven false by science). Personally, I'm kind of inclined to advantage/dlsadvsntage both about equally in the legal realm.
As a side note, the Loch Ness Monster has not been proven false by science. I’m not sure it can be, this side of draining Loch Ness somehow (and even then, it would only prove that Nessie wasn’t there now, at the time of draining, not in the past).
Carry on…
That’s because he eats it all!
I think the biggest argument against is that for there to be a Nessie now, there has to have been a whole family of Nessies in the past. And I don't think there has ever been a sustainable breeding population of Nessies there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmWLJmbytkk&list=RDjmWLJmbytkk&start_radio=1
Very few people have the analytical skills to think things through. Emotions and wishful thinking and past hurts etc take over.
There is no evidence either way. The JWs make their claims based on their interpretation of scripture. I think they're wrong. You think they're wrong. But I can't prove that they're wrong.
This is a completely different situation from something like Gerson therapy, which has been repeatedly proved to be total bollocks.
When someone says "there is no evidence for X", it has a completely different meaning if evidence for X would be obtainable if it existed vs what it means if evidence for or against X cannot be obtained.
And if the family in the OP were found to have illegally coerced the woman into refusing treatment, you think that the law should treat them differently depending on whether they were acting according to scientific quackery or religious dogma?
If what you're doing is illegal coercion, I don't see how it can make a difference to the illegality whether your intentions are based in quackery, dogma, or completely accurate medical science.
Well, I can't recall the precise genealogy of this discussion, but I think somewhere along the way someone started arguing that there was, in fact, a distinction of some sort to be made between quacks advising bad medical practices and mystics advising bad medical practices.
I guess I COULD see a distinction between the two at the level of the respective movements' leadership. A quack claiming scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism is arguably somewhere in the vicinity of false-advertising, whereas a Brooklyn Elder is just relying on his own power of office to convince people he's right.
(IOW the quack comes closer to the old "fire in a crowded theater" example that Oliver Wendell Holmes used to justify locking up elderly socialists in World War I. Though as you can probably tell, I personally am somewhat dubious about his line of reasoning in that instance.)
Are we sure these vaccines are safe? There was an article in the Lancet in 1998 saying that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
A statement containing no falsehoods whatsoever. Misleading omissions, maybe, but it would be a bureaucratic nightmare trying to police those.
I guess part of the answer to that comes down to how comfortable you are with laws that force people to do things that are in direct conflict with their religious beliefs.
Well, more precisely for the context of this discussion...
If I have X level of comfort in forcing devotees of quackery to violate their beliefs, is my level of comfort in forcing devotees of a religion to do the same more, less, or equal to X?
I would guess that most people on the Ship will see this from a faith standpoint and make what is to them a rational distinction between scientific quackery and religious teaching. In my own experience, a good many people - and that would include close family members - do not make any such distinction.
It made no difference to the outcome . The fairly short delay in calling the ambulance, trying to argue against adrenalin, nothing was going to save Paloma's life at that point. She was taken into hospital, put on life support, but died five days later without having regained consciousness at any point.
But when a person is unconscious and can't give consent, informed or otherwise, and their caregiver is acting in accordance with their own conspiracy theories - what then?
IMO “illegal coercion” is where the line is drawn - whether the motive is medical misinformation or religious teaching.
If the caregiver is legally required to perform certain life-saving procedures as desired by the patient, and doesn't do so, whether because they are following quack science, or following religious dogma, or because they just want to keep watching their favorite soap opera on TV, and the patient is harmed as a result, then the caregiver should be criminally charged.
Not sure what the law on that is in England. But, in any case, the main issue in the Paloma case seems to be not the denial of services, but the persuasion of the patient to refuse the services in the first place.
There is another issue which is that different places categorise religions differently. UK law only recognise religions that involve worship of a deity - legally speaking, if there's no deity worship it's not a religion (which is why Scientology is not legally a religion in the UK). Iirc "deeply-held belief" doesn't come with all of the legal criteria that religion does in terms of protected categories.
Not to mention non-theistic Unitarians. And do UFO cults get in, or does the deity have to be non-material?
I don't know, but some streams of Buddhism are theistic so that would mean that Buddhism as a whole is covered - it wouldn't depend on individual beliefs to count as a religion or not. Unitarianism in the UK has historically been Christian Unitarianism specifically so is recognised as a Christian denomination. I don't know how UFO cults would fit into that legal framework.
What you may be referring to is R v Registrar General, ex parte Segerdal (1970), which refused to register a chapel of the Church of Scientology on the grounds that there was no worship (i.e. submission to a higher power) in Scientology.
I suspect it's a case of English and Welsh law being a hodge-podge of case-by-case decisions with no overarching rationale!
So, who was taking whom to court in a case that's the Crown against the Registrar General?
When you're talking about religion under UK law, you need to work out *which* law you're talking about, and also consider whether it's English or Scottish (or other) law.
In the above case, it appears to be the Places of Worship Registration Act 1855. As the wikipedia entry points out: While the Charities Act, for example, is likely to be relevant for other issues relating to faith groups.
I see this kind of thing often in the style of cause for UK public law decisions - to this Canadian it makes it look like the government is suing itself which obviously is not what is really happening. Is there a quick and easy explanation that someone can help out with?
Thanks for encapsulating the reasons for my confusion.
There's two separate questions here. If you're exerting coercive control over someone, that's illegal. Whether or not a reasonable objective observer would believe that you intended this for their net benefit, or whether it actually was to their net benefit, isn't relevant.
If you're not exerting illegal control over another person, but "merely" providing assistance, advice, and counsel, then there are questions in this thread about what responsibility you have to not misrepresent yourself as having expertise you don't have, for example.