Trials of faith

The state of Tennessee is in a bit of a quandary at the moment.

Back in 2002, one Jacqueline Crank was sentenced to unsupervised probation for negligence in the death of her fifteen-year-old daughter Jessica from Ewing's sarcoma.  Jessica was not brought in for conventional medical treatment, but instead was subjected to a bout of "faith healing" on the part of the girl's "spiritual father," Ariel Sherman, and various family friends.

"Laying on of hands" in a Pentecostal Church [image courtesy of photographer Russell Lee and the Wikimedia Commons]

Despite the light sentence, Crank hasn't been willing to let the matter go, and has pursued appeals all the way up to the Tennessee Supreme Court.  And the sticky part of the issue is that Tennessee has something called the Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act, which allows parents to avoid medical treatment for their children if it would interfere with their religious beliefs.  Crank's claim -- and it's hard to see how she's wrong -- is that this protects certain established religious sects who don't believe in using modern medicine (e.g. Christian Scientists) but it didn't protect her, because she belongs to a sect that includes only her and about two dozen others, living "in a cult-type religious environment with many people... all of whom they consider 'family' although none of them are related."

Her last appeal, in which her sentence was upheld, was decided in June of 2013.  In the decision, the following provision of the Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act was quoted:

Nothing in this chapter [Tennessee Code Annotated Title 39, Chapter 15, setting forth certain offenses against children, including child abuse and neglect] shall be construed to mean a child is neglected, abused, or abused or neglected in an aggravated manner for the sole reason the child is being provided treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone in accordance with the tenets or practices of a recognized church or religious denomination by a duly accredited practitioner thereof in lieu of medical or surgical treatment.

I have two issues with this.

First, how is denying a child medical treatment ever anything other than child abuse?  Allowing a child to remain in pain, or perhaps even to die, of a treatable illness is "abuse and neglect" no matter whether the reason is negligence or "deeply held religious beliefs."  You can't "provide treatment by spiritual means," because it doesn't work.  The list of children who have died in the hands of faith healers -- some from agonizing conditions like appendicitis -- is long.

Second, how do you become a "duly accredited practitioner" of faith healing?  Cf. my earlier comment about the fact that it doesn't work.  I suppose, of course, that there are also training programs for astrology, crystal energy healing, and homeopathy, so having a certificate in Latin on your wall saying you're an accredited faith healer isn't that much more ridiculous.

The problem is, of course, that this puts the Tennessee Supreme Court in the awkward position of either having to admit that the basis of their Spiritual Treatment Exemption Act is a flawed belief that systematizes child abuse, or siding with a woman who while her child was experiencing bone disintegration from a grapefruit-sized tumor, "decided to turn to Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior, my Healer, Defender for her healing. That being a believer in the Lord, being a believer in this Word, that He was the only Healer. And through that belief we took it in our hands to pray for her, to heal her with prayer, to know that Jesus Christ is the Healer, is the Deliverer."

So the decision will either imply that all religious beliefs are equal, even the loony ones, or that some beliefs are more equal than others.  And either way, the justices on the Tennessee Supreme Court will have painted themselves into a legal corner that it's hard to see an escape from.

Brain on fire

When a new discovery in medical science is made, there's always the danger that gullible and/or hopeful people will misinterpret the results.  The danger is especially high when the discovery has to do with something simple and accessible, such as the find that trans-cranial electrical brain stimulation leads to higher cognitive function.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

A year ago, some researchers at Oxford University found that a painless, non-invasive application of "electrical noise," delivered through electrodes attached to the scalp, improved attention, accuracy, and memory, and that the effect lasted for weeks or months.  The procedure is called TRNS (transcranial random noise stimulation), and shows great promise in helping individuals with cognitive impairment -- and perhaps even us ordinary folks who just want a boost in our thinking ability.

"Performance on both the calculation and rote learning tasks improved over the five days, and the former improvements were maintained until six months after training," study leader Dr. Roy Cohen Kadosh told reporters.  "Research has shown that by delivering electricity to the right part of the brain, we can change the threshold of neurons that transmit information in our brain, and by doing that we can improve cognitive abilities in different types of psychological functions...  Our neuro-imaging results suggested that TRNS increases the efficiency with which stimulated brain areas use their supplies of oxygen and nutrients...  Participants receiving TRNS showed superior long-term performance, compared to sham controls, six months later."

So far, pretty cool.  But of course, when a researcher discovers something like this, it opens the door for the greedy to take advantage of the gullible by creating their own electrical stimulation devices, and claiming that "research shows" that they'll help you to think better.

"A headset for gamers, take charge... Overclock your brain," claims one company that sells home electrical stimulation devices.  Another one states: "Can you learn 20-40% quicker, reduce pain, feel better, increase energy or reduce stress with tDCS?  Research studies say, YES!"

There's even a forum on Reddit devoted to the subject -- complete with claims that TRNS can treat everything from autism to schizophrenia.  Less publicized, though, are the accounts of people who have burned their scalps because of leaving the electrodes on too long, or using a unit that delivers a higher-than-recommended voltage.

Through all of this, there have been some voices calling for reason.  Dr. Hannah Maslin, also of Oxford, published a paper calling for regulation of these devices.  "It is becoming increasingly easy for individuals to buy brain-modulating devices online that promise to make the user’s brain work faster, or more effectively, or more creatively," Maslin writes.  "Such devices can involve passing electrical currents through one’s brain or using electromagnetic fields to penetrate the scalp and skull to make neurons fire.  Yet, when purchased outside clinical settings, these devices are unregulated, with no system in place to ensure their safety.  With the market for enhancement technologies expanding, and with devices already crossing international borders, controlling which products are approved for sale is a global issue, potentially requiring international regulatory harmonization."

Steven Novella, neurologist at Yale University, put it even more bluntly.  "Any device with medical claims that it's meant to affect our biological function should be appropriately regulated.  Regulation is the only thing that creates the motivation to spend the money and take the time to do the proper research."

Of course, I'm expecting that this will bring howls of anger from the alternative-medicine crowd, who get their jollies claiming that the medical establishment is actively trying to keep us all sick so that they can make more money.  The truth, of course, is that regulation is about protecting people from their own ignorance.  TRNS does show great promise in improving memory and cognition -- but putting those devices in the hands of people who don't know how to use them correctly is asking for trouble.

So if you're tempted by the hype, my advice is to put away your credit card and read some of the actual research.  It may be that eventually TRNS units will be available for use for ordinary folks, but right now they're (rightfully) in the hands of the medical researchers.  Heaven knows I'd like to think more clearly; but I'm not going to cave in to that desire and end up burning a hole in my scalp.

Call me a Nervous Nellie, but I'm just going to err on the side of caution in this instance.

Branches on the Tree of Life

Sometimes I think I spend too much time railing against specious, unscientific thinking, and not enough time celebrating the wonderful discoveries humanity has made through science.

It's amazing, when you think about it, how our lives have changed in the past fifty years.  When I was little, there were not only no personal computers, there were no pocket calculators.  Many of us still had slide rules.  There were no CDs, only vinyl records and cassette tapes.  Most kitchens didn't have microwave ovens.  Phones had rotary dials, and you got really pissed off if the person you were calling had lots of 9s in his telephone number because it took so long for the dial to spin back from a 9.  Our television was black-and-white, got four channels, and to make the reception better you wrapped the antenna in aluminum foil.

Seems pretty quaint, doesn't it?  Our lives today would seem like The Jetsons to a typical adult in the 1960s.

But the pragmatic stuff isn't all there is, and I would contend that it's not even the most important part of what science does.  There's a broadening of vision, and an increased sense of wonder and beauty, that comes from understanding the intricacies of the workings of the universe.  My life is immeasurably enriched by having an idea of the basics of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology.  Science's capacity to make us stand back and say, "That is so cool!" is, to me, one of its most important functions.  All practicality aside, it's science's ability to rock us back on our heels, to take us out of the petty world of squabbling celebrities and fractious politics, that is its greatest accomplishment.

Toward that end, I'm going to throw out there two stories from just the past couple of days that had that "Wow!" factor for me.  Both come from my field, biology.  See if you have the same reaction I did -- if, just for a moment, it gave you a glimpse into the awe-inspiring nature of... Nature.

First, we have a paleontological discovery from Argentina of a newly-named species of dinosaur called... Dreadnoughtus.  I kid you not.  And when you hear about this beast, you'll see that the name is apt.  Dreadnoughtus was a titanosaur, a relative of the huge Brachiosaurus and huger Argentinosaurus, but Dreadnoughtus put both of these species to shame, size-wise.  The familiar Brachiosaurus, often mentioned when the subject of enormous land animals comes up, topped the scale at an estimated 75,000 pounds.

Dreadnoughtus was three times heavier.

The specimen from Argentina included a left thigh bone six feet long, and neck vertebra three feet across.  That's one spinal bone, folks.  This dinosaur was an estimated 85 feet long, and weighed more than a fully-loaded Boeing 737-900.

That, my friends, is a bigass dinosaur.

Of course, this prompts our imagination to try to picture what this thing must have been like when it was alive.  "(Dreadnoughtus was) probably a pretty surly beast,” the leader of the study team, Dr. Kenneth Lacovara of Drexel University, said.  "I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near this guy.  If he leaned against you, you’re dead."

Then we have a paper on an animal collected from deep marine regions off the coast of Tasmania.  Called Dendrogramma, this animal looks a little like a translucent mushroom, only the stalk ends in a mouth.  The digestive tract runs up the stalk, repeatedly bifurcating as it goes, and branches out into the "cap."

Why is this interesting?  Because thus far, Dendrogramma has defied classification.  It seems likely that Dendrogramma represents a whole new phylum of Kingdom Animalia -- making it further removed from all other animal species than we are from jellyfish.

Dendrogramma, Phylum incertae sedis [image courtesy of Just, Kristensen, and Olesen, and PLOS-One]

That such an animal can still frustrate taxonomists, given all of our understanding of evolutionary genetics, taxonomy, and cladistics, is just an indication of how much more there is out there to learn.  If Dendrogramma does turn out, upon analysis, to be the earliest branch of the animal kingdom, "(It will) completely reshape the tree of life, and even our understanding of how animals evolved, how neurosystems evolved, how different tissues evolved," said Leonid Moroz, neurobiologist at the University of Florida's Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in St. Augustine.  "It can rewrite whole textbooks in zoology."

I find the whole thing tremendously exciting.  This, really, is the cutting edge of science, illustrating Neil deGrasse Tyson's statement "Scientists have to be comfortable with ignorance, because we live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe...  Journalists write articles about science and they always begin, 'Scientists now have to go back to the drawing board!'  As if we're sitting up in our offices, masters of the universe, and then go, 'Oops!  Somebody discovered something!'  No, we're always at the drawing board.  If you're not at the drawing board, you're not making discoveries.  You're not doing science."

Lines of sight

What amazes me about so many crazy claims is that you get the impression that the people making them didn't even try to find a natural explanation.

It's one thing to speculate wildly about a phenomenon for which science is still searching for explanations.  Déjà vu, for example, is one experience that virtually everyone shares, and for which no convincing explanation has yet been found.  It's no wonder that it's fertile ground for people who prefer to ascribe such occurrences to the paranormal.

But in other cases, there is such a simple, convincing natural explanation that you have to wonder why the claimant isn't going there.  Such, for example, is the suggestion over at the phenomenally bizarre quasi-religious site The Watchman's Cry that geographical locations on the Earth that have been the sites of disasters (natural or manmade) fall along connecting lines, making some sort of mystical, meaningful pattern.

The article starts out with a bang, with the phrase, "Several months ago, I had four prophetic dreams which took place on the same night."  Four precognitive dreams is pretty impressive, I have to say, especially since most skeptics don't think precognition occurs at all.  Be that as it may, these dreams involved train wrecks, which is ironic, because that is what the rest of the site turns out to be.

Both literally and figuratively.

The site goes into great detail about various train derailments, and how if you connect them by lines (great circles, to be more precise), those lines then go around the Earth and connect to other sites that have had bad things happen.  These then intersect other such great circles, which go other interesting places, and so on.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It's just ley lines all over again, isn't it?  If your search parameters are wide enough -- basically, "anywhere that anything bad has happened in the past two centuries" -- you can find great circles that link them up.  Which is entirely unsurprising.  I could draw a great circle anywhere on Earth and pretty much guarantee that I'll find three or more sites near it that had some kind of natural or manmade calamity in the past two centuries.  The Earth is a big place, and there are lots of calamities to choose from.

But what gets me most about this guy is that he doesn't even seem to understand that given the fact that the Earth is a sphere (an oblate spheroid, to be precise, but let's not get technical), a given point on Earth has an infinite number of great circles passing through it.  Just as two points on a plane define a line, two points on a sphere define a great circle.  And his lack of grasp of simple geometry becomes apparent when he tells us that it's amazing that two intersecting great circles (ones connecting Houston, Texas to train derailment sites in Rosedale, Maryland and Bear Creek, Alabama, respectively) were "only 900 feet apart."

How can you say that two intersecting lines are any specific distance apart?  If they intersect, they are (at that point) zero feet apart.  Further from the intersection, they are further apart.  Because that's how intersection works.

But the author of this site trumpets this statement as if it were some kind of epiphany.  It's like being excited because you found a triangle that had three sides.

I'll leave you to explore the site on your own, if you're curious to see more of this false-pattern malarkey, but suffices to say that there's nothing at all mystical going on here.  He's adding geometry to coincidence and finding meaning, and it's no great surprise that it turns out to be the meaning he already believed going into it.

So like the ley lines people, this guy doesn't seem to be trying very hard to see if there's a natural explanation that sufficiently accounts for all of the facts, a tendency I have a hard time comprehending.  Why are people attracted to this kind of hokum?  Science itself is a grand, soaring vision, telling us that we are capable of understanding how the universe works, from the realm of the enormous to the realm of the unimaginably small.  With a little work, you can find out the rules that govern everything from galaxies to quarks.

But that, apparently, isn't enough for some people.

Microwave phobia

In order to avoid falling for whatever absurd nonsense happen to be in the offing, you not only need to have some good critical thinking skills, you also need a basic knowledge of the sciences.

This is especially critical given the penchant that pseudoscience hacks have for using scientific-sounding terms in bogus ways.  Given that said hacks are quite good at sounding convincing, and can throw around random vocabulary words with the best of 'em, if you don't understand the basic laws of science, as well as a few solid definitions, you're going to fall for whatever tripe they're offering.

Take, for example, the article from Prevent Disease that I've now seen several times on social media, called "12 Facts About Microwaves That Should Forever Terminate Their Use."

[image courtesy of photographer Christian Rasmussen at apoltix.dk, and the Wikimedia Commons]

This piece, written by one Marco Torres, is so full of false statements and specious science that it's hard to know where to start.  Here's a sample, picked more or less at random:

Microwaves are a source of electromagnetic energy (a form of nonionizing form of radiation) electronically generated. When penetrating the aliments, they trigger an inner rotation of the water molecules inside the food. This rotation triggers a friction between the molecules and the result is a rapid growth in temperature.

Okay, he starts out well.  Microwaves are a form of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation that is electronically generated.  But so is the light from a light bulb.  And I don't know what an "inner rotation of the water molecules" even means -- since microwaves are good at making water molecules (and also fat molecules) spin, maybe this was just a slip.  But the water molecules are not experiencing "friction" -- they're simply moving.  Because that's what an increase in temperature means.  The faster molecules move, the higher the temperature, whether that temperature increase is caused by a microwave, a conventional oven, or just sitting out in the sun.

Then, though, we start hearing about all the bad things this can cause:

Microwaves use super-fast particles to literally radiate the contents of water inside food and bring it to boil. Not only has microwave use been linked to causing infertility in men, but it also denatures many of the essential proteins in the food making them virtually indigestible.

"Super-fast" -- sure, given that all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light.  And what's the alternative to "literally radiating" the food?  Figuratively radiating it?

And there is no connection between using microwaves and infertility, as long as you keep your genitalia outside of the microwave oven.  So guys -- if you're microwaving your lunch while naked, don't accidentally shut your junk in the door and then turn the oven on.

Then we have this unintentionally funny statement:

Most animals will only consume food in its natural, unprocessed state, but humans actually go out of their way to render food nutritionally worthless before eating it.

True, I suppose.  I've hardly ever seen a squirrel operating a microwave oven.

Think about all the prepackaged and processed foods we purchase and consume annually. It's no wonder the state of our health is in dire straits.

So here we have a mix of truth, opinion, and blatant falsehood, all in one sentence.  Prepackaged food is wasteful of resources -- consider the practice, common in grocery stores, of individually shrink-wrapping zucchini and cucumbers.  Processed food is another matter -- a lot of canned food (especially things like soups) are sky-high in salt and sugar, and rather low in solid nutritional content.  But as far as "our health (being) in dire straits," it actually isn't.  Our life expectancy and general health is better now than at any time in the Earth's history.  The distant past wasn't some kind of idyll in which our ancestors lived in a healthy, natural paradise; it was closer to the line from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.

Solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short.

Then we have this:

Microwave ovens work physically, biochemically and physiologically, producing ions and various free radicals, which destroy viruses and bacteria, but not toxins and microtoxins. The experts have concluded that food cooked in microwaves loses between 60% and 90% of its vital energy and, at the same time, the structural disintegration processes accelerates. Also, the nutrient substances are altered, leading to digestive diseases. These microwaves can increase both the number of cancerous cells in blood and the number of stomach and intestinal cancerous cells.

How does non-ionizing radiation produce ions, pray tell?  And it's true that microwaving food won't destroy most toxins, but neither will conventional cooking.  Are you therefore somehow implying that raw toxins are better than cooked ones?  Generally, if your food is toxic, you shouldn't eat it.

And there's no such thing as "vital energy."  Your food is supposed to be dead when you consume it.  My general opinion is that if you're getting your "vital energy" by biting chunks out of live animals, you need psychiatric evaluation, not nutritional counseling.

And there's no connection between microwaves and cancer.  Cf. the Skepticink article I linked above, which explains why that claim is bogus quite nicely.

And so on and so forth.  It's easy to see how someone who isn't well-versed in science might be swayed by this garbage.  Between the science-y sounding language, and the fear talk, you can understand how someone could be alarmed into getting rid of their microwave oven.  The only insurance against this kind of spurious pseudo-journalism is knowing some science, and catching these folks at their game.

So, in short: go ahead and use your microwave.  It's clean, efficient, and has low energy consumption rates.  Used properly, it has no negative health impact.

As long as you don't accidentally microwave your testicles.  I have to admit, that was good advice.

Ice buckets for Satan

Thus far I have been challenged twice to do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, both times by dear friends, and I haven't done it.  I have no particular qualms about jumping on board a do-something-silly-for-charity bandwagon, and am in full support of stem cell research.  My reluctance has to do with one thing, and one thing only:

I am a wuss about the cold.

I am one of those people who starts to shiver when the thermometer drops below 65F.  This is particularly ironic given that I live in upstate New York, where the climate is such that during most of the year, you do the Ice Bucket Challenge whether you want to or not simply by going outside.  In my own defense I will state that I was born and raised in southern Louisiana, in a town that (in my dad's words) was "so Deep South that if it was any deeper, you'd be floating."  So I have the tropics, or at least the subtropics, in my blood.

But I do feel a bit guilty about not getting someone, most likely my wife, to pour ice water on my head.  I mean, it seems like the least I could do, other than donating some money to the ALS Association, which I'm gonna do anyway.  But now I'm glad I didn't participate, because I just found out that by doing the Ice Bucket Challenge...

... I am baptizing myself in Satan's name.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Or at least, that's the contention of a writer for the phenomenally bizarre site Before It's News, which features stories that haven't become news yet for a reason.  In this article, written by someone named Lyn Leahz, we find out that the whole Ice Bucket thing was devised by satanists, so that they can secretly steal your soul.

Or something like that.  It's hard to tell, actually, because the article features prose like this:

I recently found out about the Ice Bucket Challenge and I really didn’t pay attention to it until a good friend mentioned that an ex-satanist friend said that this is the very same ritual he did when he was a satanist and was like a covenant contract with the devil.  The enemy has come into America through the back door with what seems like a good work and a good cause but it is only on the surface.  As you dig a little deeper and take the time to research, you will see that what I am saying is true.  This is a type of sacrifice.  It is a type of satanic sacrifice...  There is definitely a spirit behind this cause and it is not the Holy Spirit...  To all those who have already participated, there is no condemnation, but there is a plea from the heart of God to pray, seek his face and ask forgiveness.

So there you go.  We also find out, through some videos that I only recommend watching after drinking a double scotch, that this is part of the Illuminati-sponsored "fire and ice challenges" that are to "purify America before the Great Sacrifice."  This comes from "evangelist Anita Fuentes," who said, and I quote: "'Now Anita,' you may be saying, 'how is this Ice Bucket Challenge related to a ritual purification before human sacrifice?'"  Which, to be honest, was nothing that I myself would ever have thought to say.  But she goes on to say that dumping water on the head is baptism, and that this means that America is being "ritually cleansed."  Why?  Because of the Illuminati, and pyramids, and the New World Order, and the Book of Revelation.  At that point, I kind of gave up, because the video is 43 minutes long, and I just don't have that kind of patience.

We also have the contention that during the moment of shock from pouring cold water on your head, demons could enter your body.  Which, you would think, would make doing the Polar Bear Swim a seriously dangerous proposition.  Not to mention the buddy of mine who owns a sauna, and in January likes to run out of the sauna bare-ass naked, do a belly flop in the snow, and "make anatomically correct snow angels."

And allow me to add, I've seen no evidence of my friend being possessed by demons.  He's a little odd, granted, but I don't think demons are at fault.

So I think the whole thing is kind of ridiculous.  If pouring ice water on your head is your idea of fun, knock yourself out.  I still may end up being guilted into doing this, depending on how much my two friends who nominated me decide to push matters.  If so, I better do it soon, because it's already getting cool up here in the Frozen North.  And no way am I pouring ice water on myself if it's below 65F.  That's just asking too much from a card-carrying wuss.

Battling the witch hunters

In the latest news from the Unparalleled Chutzpah department, we have a witch hunter from Nigeria who is suing the British Humanist Association for half a billion pounds.

Helen Ukpabio, founder of Christian Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, calls herself "Lady Apostle."  She claims to fight the "spirits of evil," including "gnomes, the witchcraft spirits in charge of the earth."  Ukpabio was targeted by the BHA especially for her exorcisms performed on little children.  "A child under the age of two," she writes, "possessed with black, red and vampire witchcraft spirits... screams at night, cries, is always feverish, suddenly deteriorates in health, puts up an attitude of fear, and may not feed very well."

And such a child, Ukpabio says, may be a witch.  Not, apparently, just a sick toddler, behaving as sick toddlers do, and (most importantly) needing help from a qualified doctor.

The BHA, and a superstition watchdog agency, the Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network, have been urging the British government to ban Ukpabio and others like her from entering the United Kingdom.  Gary Foxcroft, executive director of the WHRIN, says:

This latest court case is the latest in a long line of unsuccessful legal actions that Helen Ukpabio has pursued against me and other human rights activists.  Previous cases were thrown out of court in Nigeria but this time she is looking to take action in a UK court.  I have no doubt that a judge in the UK will reach the same conclusion as those in Nigeria.  Of course, the real question here is whether our government should allow hate preachers such as Helen Ukpabio to enter the UK.  Since her teachings have been linked to widespread child abuse in reports by the UN and various other bodies it would appear that this may not be in the public interest.  This case also therefore provides the Home Secretary and the National Working Group to Tackle Child Abuse Linked to Faith and Belief with a great opportunity to condemn the practices of such pastors, take concrete action and ensure that justice is served.

Which is exactly the right approach.  But now Ukpabio is dragging the BHA into court, claiming that they have committed libel and defamation, and have damaged her reputation by making false claims about her beliefs.  And even if she loses her lawsuit, the BHA will be saddled with the legal costs of defending itself against her claims, costs it can ill afford to bear.

But the case also brings up the awkward question of where to draw the line regarding the religious indoctrination of children in other venues.  Consider, for example, "Jesus Camp," the documentary film about a Charismatic Christian children's summer camp near Devil's Lake, North Dakota.  If you haven't seen the film, you should; it's simultaneously fascinating and highly disturbing.  After watching it, it's hard to think of this sort of thing as anything other than brainwashing.

In other words, emotional abuse.  Which accusation should also be leveled at the Muslims for their practices of child marriage and female genital mutilation.

The threat to "identified witches" in Nigeria, however, is most serious of all, because these children are often killed outright for their "witchcraft."  Leonardo Rocha dos Santos, director of the human rights organization Way to the Nations, says:

Over the past four years, since I've been involved in the rescue mission of the falsely branded children as witches, the number of tortured and killed children has not decreased.  I've seen many cases, and some very dramatic ones.  We are present with our rescue work only in one of the three Nigerian states, the one with the Christian population.  The so-called witch children are tortured and killed also in Cameroon and Angola, and the UNICEF report calls the situation in Congo as critical.  Some international organizations are talking about thousands of stigmatized children. I have met at least 400 cases of tortured, abandoned or killed children.  Only two months ago we rescued four children who were to be murdered together, at the same time.

And about Helen Ukpabio, he minces no words:

The problem has really escalated since 1999 when Helen Ukpabio produced a horror movie, End of the Wicked.  The movie and her exorcism "ministry" have provided a leading inspiration for many deaths of children in Nigeria and surrounding countries.  She is at this time visiting the U.K.  If I were to speak publicly, or in churches in the U.K. or U.S. teaching how to make bombs I would be arrested immediately because bombs kill people.  Yet this woman, whose public work is turning parents into murderers of their own children, has been allowed to visit the U.K. where she is performing her deliverance séances and exorcisms on children at this moment.

Precisely.  The time has come to call out dangerous superstitions for what they are, and to stop these people from hiding behind "it's my religion."  I'm sorry: if your religion is prompting you to victimize children, you need to be stopped.  Period.

I'll end with a quote from the brilliant Nigerian Nobel laureate Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka:

The activities of self-styled exorcists who stigmatize children as witches, vampires, or whatever, and subject them to sadistic rites of demonic expulsion, are criminal, and constitute a deep embarassment to the nation.  That their activities are carried out under a religious banner expose them as heartless cynics, playing on the irrational fears of the gullible.

To which I can only say: Amen.