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posted by janrinok on Tuesday June 19 2018, @03:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the suffer-the-little-children dept.

Researchers report in areas with greater numbers of Christian fundamentalists, infant mortality rates are higher than in areas with more mainstream Christians. The study reveals external factors such as lack of social support, birth defects, poverty and lack of insurance, in addition to religious conviction, are the main reasons for the increased mortality rates.

The odds of an infant dying before their first birthday are higher in counties with greater proportions of conservative Protestants, especially fundamentalists, than in counties with more mainline Protestants and Catholics, according to a new Portland State University study The study, published online in May in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, supports the idea that the more insular, anti-institutional culture of fundamentalists can lead to poorer health outcomes.

Ginny Garcia-Alexander, a sociology professor in PSU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the study's lead author, examined the influence of religion on postneonatal infant mortality rates, or the number of deaths from four weeks through the first year, using data from 1990 through 2010. Garcia-Alexander said a leading cause of infant death in the first 28 days is birth defects, which can be heavily influenced by advances in medical knowledge and technology. By contrast, deaths in the next 11 months of life are more often linked to external factors such as poverty, lack of insurance, social support networks and religion.

Garcia-Alexander said the findings mirror trends seen in adult mortality rates, where areas with more mainline Protestants and Catholics had better health outcomes than areas with more conservative Protestants.

The study's findings build on previous research that says that Catholicism and mainline Protestantism are civically minded, externally oriented faiths that emphasize community-level care. For example, church-affiliated hospitals and social-service providers such as Catholic Charities can bolster the health infrastructure of local communities.

Source: https://neurosciencenews.com/infant-mortality-fundamentalism-9165/


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 19 2018, @06:12PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday June 19 2018, @06:12PM (#695180)

    A fair number of the anti-vax nutjobs are fundamentalist Christians. And guess what? If you don't vaccinate your kids, they can die of the diseases you didn't vaccinate them against. All because you were scared of modern science with its scary-sounding hard-to-pronounce words based on Latin and Greek.

    Not that that's a new problem: People have been refusing medical treatment on religious grounds for decades, and dying as a result.

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