Word from New Zealand Zimbabwe is that a religious sect there — which believes in prayer over vaccinations — may be responsible for the deaths of over one hundred children from measles.

I believe people have the right to practice their religious beliefs… up until they start to hurt others. It has been proven over and again that prayer does nothing to heal disease over the placebo effect, while vaccinations have saved hundreds of millions of people. That’s math I can do pretty easily.

If this story is true, I certainly hope that the people involved are introduced to the inside of a jail cell for a long, long time. They can happily pray there all they want, and on the outside those children can get the vaccinations that will save their lives.

I was going to write about how Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Kerry (D-MA) were trying to somewhat slimily slip a provision into the health care bill about paying for prayer-based health services, but then wouldn’tyouknowit, Steve Novella (who apparently does not need to sleep or eat or breathe) beat me to it. Besides his take-down of the odd and wholly unrealistic beliefs of Christian Scientists, I’ll note that is has been pretty definitively proven that prayer doesn’t work in healing. So not only is this provision unconstitutional, it’s just an all-around bad idea.