Court Forestalls Circumcision
A British court recently decided that a five-year-old boy will not undergo ritual circumcision, according to Reuters. The boy's father, a Muslim, argued that circumcision is his son's birthright and that, as a father, he has a duty to see it carried out. The mother is Christian and opposes the procedure.

In this landmark case the Court of Appeal upheld a previous High Court ruling. "It is irreversible and should only be carried out where both parents agree, or where the court considers it in the interests of the child," said judge Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. Of the ruling, the judge said that the legal priority is the welfare of the child, not the religious wishes of the parents. Because the boy will be raised by his mother, and not as a Muslim, circumcision was deemed not in his interest¾nipping his father's paternal duty in the bud.

A Suicide's Redress
Determined to kill himself, Ramon Garcia ended up in Hialeah, Florida's Palmetto General Hospital twice in three days. Hours after his second release from the hospital's emergency room, he consummated his quest for self-destruction by fatally stabbing himself at home.

You might think that's the end of the story, but it's just the first act. Joel Perwin, a Miami lawyer representing the Garcia family, contends that Garcia might be alive today if emergency room doctors had reviewed his medical history—particularly his previous suicide attempt—and recommended treatment. Twice Perwin has had the suit dismissed on the grounds that emergency rooms are not environments that lend themselves to predicting future behavior, but he isn't giving up, reports the Miami Daily Business Review. He recently filed for a rehearing en banc in an effort to establish that "mental and emotional conditions should be no different than physical ones and that physicians must be obligated to treat them the same."

If Perwin's effort is successful, can we have long to wait before enterprising lawyers bring suits over improper spiritual interventions, bad advice from pastoral care providers, or other yet-to-be-discovered forms of spiritual malpractice?

Taken on Faith
A routine laproscopy performed on a young Virginia woman revealed tumors, lots of them, on her ovaries. The tumors were "so suspicious, so unlike anything her gynecologist had ever seen," the on-line magazine Salon reported, "they immediately removed one ovary and half of the other."

Doctors told the patient, Amanda Chandler, that there was a fifty percent chance that the tumors were cancer, and that they would have biopsy results in two days. During those two days, friends and family gathered to comfort her, and to pray. "Numerous people, family and friends, were praying for me," Amanda said. "I was on prayer lists all over the city." An Episcopal priest laid hands on her as he prayed, and she reported a "strange heat" passing into her body.

Fortunately for Amanda, the biopsy report came back negative—the tumors were benign. "If you believe in something strong enough, it can manifest itself into something powerful and unexplainable," she said.

Powerful and unexplainable, indeed. The vigils began after the biopsy was taken. Did the prayers change the tissue once the samples had been sent to the lab? Only additional research will tell.