David Stephan is perhaps best known for being one of the parents convicted of not providing the necessities of life when their son died from a treatable (but untreated) form of meningitis. They decided to treat their child with “alternative medicine” rather than seek actual medical attention until it was too late, and their child died as a result.
Stephan is hawking nutritional supplements. A store in B.C. is garnering a bit of controversy because they invited him to speak at their store. What interests me is the comments of the store’s owner, Dave Fuller, who said “Who am I to say that just because something happened that was an accident the guy regrets — his son died — that he shouldn’t have a job?” when talking with the CBC.
That’s actually a good question.
It wasn’t an accident, it was a failure to provide the necessities of life, so let’s be clear on that point. He was convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail time for it, which means he was responsible for what happened. The question is whether or not he should be allowed to go around hawking supplements after.
Let’s look at other careers. If someone dies on a construction site due to the negligence of a contractor, people will question their ability to manage a site. If a kid dies in a school thanks to the negligence of a teacher, people will not be willing to have their kids supervised by that teacher again. If someone dies thanks to the negligence of a doctor, people will want to see that doctor stripped of their medical license. This child died thanks to the negligence of this man and his magical vitamins which aren’t a medical treatment. Should we deny him employment selling vitamins thanks to his past?
In the case of those other careers, it can be argued that the people involved could bounce back, largely through increased training, better practices and learning from their mistakes. Anyone would naturally be reluctant to trust any of them, but they could in theory become good at their job if they were willing to learn from their fatal mistakes. Stephan, however, showed no indication that he had any inclination to learn from his mistakes. If anything, he doubled down, trying to position himself as a martyr for the cause of dubious medical treatment.
That’s what makes me think that Stephan should not be allowed to do presentations on supplements. He showed no indication of learning from his mistake, and his mistake killed a child. Any professional can make a mistake, so long as they show they learned from what they did wrong, I am inclined to forgive. The difference with Stephan is that he did not learn from his mistake, and made a big show of not learning from his mistakes. He decided he was a martyr, punished on behalf of all the parents who take medically dubious care options, even after seeing indisputable proof that his ideas of how to properly treat a sick child are ineffective at best, and fatal at worst. That makes him dangerous, an unfit parent, and in this case, unfit to try to sell vitamins.
So no, he shouldn’t have this job. He can have a different job were he won’t hurt anyone.
