'Parental rights' is code for religious believers who choose superstition over science, misinformation over medicine
Amber Alert issued after father abducts son from government care, opposed to most medical treatments for religious reasons
Five years after a global pandemic exacerbated by religious extremists and conspiracy theorists opposed to experts and science, an Amber Alert issued Thursday for a two-year-old has once again spurred the conversation about when religious beliefs come into conflict with medicine.
“The government is forcing vaccines and other treatments on my disabled child, and now my child is a car, and the doctors are mechanics, and they are stealing my car with the help of the mob (government), and now Justin Trudeau wants to steal our car."
So goes a hard-to-follow automobile metaphor from Davis Lim two years ago, one of many times doctors have had to intervene to stop the father from putting his baby at risk.
Little Theodore Lim suffers from VACTERL, a rare disorder that affects multiple body systems. VACTERL stands for vertebral defects, anal atresia, cardiac defects, tracheo-esophageal fistula, renal anomalies, and limb abnormalities.
He is in the hands of some of the best pediatric doctors in Canada. His father, however, has “done his own research.”
What was an abduction, according to medical professionals was seen as a rescue to Davis and his supporters. He took the boy from the West Coast Child Care Resource Centre in East Vancouver shortly after 10:30 a.m. on Thursday (March 13, 2025).
The Amber Alert was issued, and because of CCTV footage, Vancouver police knew the boy was abducted by his father and said the boy was in “imminent danger.”
“Theodore has a medical condition and requires a ventilator, but he is currently without a piece of the ventilator and may go into medical distress,” the VPD said.
Davis was found with Theo and his other children soon after the alert was issued in a coffee shop where he was arrested.
A former military medic, Lim has been fighting mainstream medicine, the courts, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) for almost as long as young Theo has been alive.
Delusion + disease = disaster
In 2023, Theo's serious breathing difficulties led doctors at B.C. Children’s Hospital to recommend a tracheostomy.
What would normally be a private medical matter became public when Theo was an infant because Davis objected to the surgery. He filed an injunction in B.C. Supreme Court a day before the scheduled surgery, according to a story in the Vancouver Sun.
“Me and my wife knew he didn’t need one,” Lim said at the time, a couple of days after. “I’m confident he would get better at breathing if he didn’t get the surgery.”
The medic "knows" more than pediatricians.
This followed several incidents over the preceding months where Theo had medical problem after problem, not uncommon for someone with this rare condition, but which Davis often blamed on the treatments.
A surgery didn't end well. He had a cardiac arrest while on an antibiotic and he developed another infection in his lungs. He developed COVID at one-month-old and was put on various pharmaceuticals, some causing side effects. After having 12 seizures, doctors gave Theo seizure and meningitis medication, but Davis didn't think he had meningitis.
"After doing research, he discovered it is rare for a baby with these issues to have meningitis except if there is a fever or rash," that unironic coverage of the case in 2023 by right-wing news site the Western Standard.
Davis made constant complaints about the care from nurses and doctors at BC Children's Hospital, disagreeing with almost every medical intervention. He posted on Facebook about his frustration regarding a drip-tube feeding system. He said he was contemplating turning off the feeding machine himself at his next visit, which didn't go over well.
One night after Theo’s bath in hospital, Lim tested the baby’s tolerance to go off the ventilator for about half an hour and he recorded it. Doctors saw the video the next day and determined the baby was struggling. Davis didn’t see it that way, but MCFD was called in to prevent the father from putting the baby at risk.
An interim custody order was put in place because of which, Davis's application to stop the surgery failed. After the surgery, Davis posted photos of Theo with the breathing tube calling the operation a “travesty.” He lamented that he hadn’t “guarded, defended and protected” the baby.
Daddy knows best?
The ministry only takes custody of children under extreme conditions, including if a child’s development could be seriously impaired by a treatable condition. The opinion has to be confirmed by two medical practitioners and is only done “to preserve the child’s life or to prevent serious or permanent impairment of the child’s health.”
It could be argued that Theo has so far survived with his complex medical conditions not because of but despite his father's attempts to overrule whole teams of doctors and nurses taking care of the little boy.
“I just feel that the hospital just is exploiting our son to do as many procedures as possible,” said Davis in an interview.
Thinks about that. And think about this: Davis Lim was a military medic, and BC Children's hospital was ranked fifth best pediatric hospital in the world in Newsweek magazine's World's Best Specialized Hospitals 2023 ranking awards.
The COVID-19 pandemic and cases such as this puts a spotlight on the cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where people who know very little about a subject believe they are experts because they don't have the intelligence to recognize what they don't know.
Because this case has come to light and because we are in Canada, so far Theo is one of the lucky surviving with a serious condition cared for by a father who is an anti-vaxxer and believes his religious beliefs, his "research" and his "parental rights" means not only does he think he knows better than medical professionals, but he thinks they are intentionally experimenting and harming the little boy.
Lim and his wife are Seventh Day Adventists, although how exactly their religious beliefs conflict with medical science is not clear. He has made several social media posts in recent days that tell a story of a person dedicated to superstition and conspiracy theories, but he doesn't directly connect any specific tenets of his religious beliefs with his suspicion of BC Children's.
Late Friday (March 14) he described the fact that MCFD released his three healthy children to him and the order forbidding him from seeing his wife as an "Amazing Miracle!"
"God is so good!" he wrote. "The timeline of how it all happened is such a miracle! Just like Job and the distruction [sic] and bad news was so perfectly timed."
Saturday morning Lim posted a link to a talk by Dr. Charles Hoffe at White Rock Adventist Church on Saturday (March 15). Hoffe is the Lytton physician who made the news mid-pandemic when the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C. accused him of professinal misconduct for "publishing statements on social media and other digital platforms that were misleading, incorrect or inflammatory about vaccinations, treatments and public measures relating to COVID-19."
Dr. Hoffe was one of the quacks who told patients to buy veterinary ivermectin to treat the disease. In the talk (which I watched in pain), Hoffe claims there was "a war against truth in this pandemic," and that he, burdened alone with the truth, fought a spiritual war against the narcissistic "anti-Christian" medical community.
It's nuts.
Theodore Lim has a chance to survive into older childhood and beyond, but many children around the world have died under circumstances where religious faith made for bad decision-making.
“Existing laws may be inadequate to protect children from this form of medical neglect,” reads part of the conclusion of a oft-cited study in the journal Pediatrics about parents who rely on religious rituals as an excuse to withhold medical care.
Some examples from Australia to Michigan
Australian prayer cult kills little girl
A few weeks ago, 14 members of a Christian cult in Australia were sentenced to lengthy terms in jail after they were found guilty of manslaughter for watching eight-year-old girl Elizabeth Struhs with Type 1 diabetes die after stopped giving her insulin.
When police showed up, instead of seeking treatment for the little girl, they were singing. They were waiting for God to revive her but somehow it didn't happen.
Elizabeth Struhs’ parents, Jason and Kerrie Struhs, were sentenced to 14 years jail. The cult's leader was sentenced to 13 years, and 11 other members were sentenced to between six and nine years.
Oregon church have a 'graveyard full of children'
On March 5, 2017, an Oregon medical examiner responded to a report of a dead newborn in a house in Oregon City.
Sarah Elaine Mitchell, a member of Followers of Christ Church, had given birth prematurely with no medical help. The medical examiner found Mitchell cradling the dead baby in a blanket. The baby’s father, Travis Lee Mitchell, was also in the room.
A Washington Post story from 2018 said the baby, named Ginnifer, died amid the murmured prayers of friends and family, and it wasn’t until the medical examiner confirmed the death that the cult members admitted Ginnifer had a twin, Evelyn.
He examined Evelyn and told the couple she was at medical risk and they need to go to the hospital.
“Thank you for your input,” Sarah’s father Walter White responded. The branch of the church in Oregon was founded by White's father, Sarah Mitchell’s grandfather.
Sarah, 22, and Travis, 25, were charged and pleaded guilty to criminal negligent homicide and criminal mistreatment.
The church, which believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and shuns modern medicine, is rooted in the 19th-century Pentecostal movement, the Associated Press reported.
The Mitchells were the fifth set of parents from the Followers of Christ Church to face criminal charges after failing to secure medical attention for their children in the previous nine years, according to the prosecutor.
“For far too long, children in this church have been needlessly suffering and dying because their parents, as a condition of their religious beliefs, have refused to seek medical care for their children,” the district attorney’s office stated.
“They have their own graveyard, and it’s just full of children,” former church member Myrna Cunningham told The Oregonian in 2017.
"News flash: Prayers aren't medicine," the deck in the Washington Post story puts it perfectly.
Michigan couple murdered child over religious beliefs
In 2018, a Michigan couple were charged with felony murder and first-degree child abuse after their daughter, Mary, died from malnutrition and dehydration, an autopsy revealed.
Seth Welch and his wife, Tatiana Fusari, both 27, said they didn't seek medical help for their daughter because of their religious beliefs, though they declined to define their religion, according to an NPR article with the headline "Michigan Child's Death Puts Spotlight On Clash Between Medicine And Religion."
Every state in the United States has laws prohibiting child abuse and neglect, but 34 states have exemptions when medical treatment for a child conflicts with the religious beliefs of parents, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Some states even have religious exemptions to criminal child abuse and neglect statutes. Six U.S. states even have exemptions to manslaughter laws.
Dumb as sacks of potatoes
Idaho is one of those states with exemptions to manslaughter laws thanks to Nixon-era religious exemptions. That exemption from charges of child abuse, neglect, child injury and manslaughter, was passed in the 1970s to accommodate faith-healing groups, but it came under close scrutiny at a legislative hearing in Boise, Idaho, in 2016.
Followers of Christ member Dan Sevy told the hearing that “pharmaceuticals and medicine is a product from Satan. Proof can be found in one of the lost books of Enoch.”
Sevy told legislators that he equates medicine to “witchcraft and sorcery,”
Tom Dumican made an award-winning documentary, No Greater Law, about the Followers of Christ. The film depicts the debate over Idaho’s shield laws from various perspectives, including their loudest critics.
Ex-members and others say the Followers are getting away with murder, or something close to it, according to a review in The Guardian in 2018.
Everything is bigger and more anti-science in Texas
In early 2025, as a measles outbreak struck the west Texas town of Seminole, Mennonites at the Community Church of Seminole filled the pews, sitting elbow-to-elbow, most of them unvaccinated.
“Alongside measles in this region, where voters overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump, there’s another outbreak: one of misinformation about vaccines, distrust of local public health officials and fear of governmental authority overruling family autonomy,” according to an Associated Press article from March 4, 2025.
Still, vaccinations rates are relatively high even in west Texas and those eschewing vaccines on religious grounds are in a minority.
“It’s frustrating that (Mennonites) don’t vaccinate, and they put other people’s families and children at exposure for it,” said Stephen Spruill, a 36-year-old trucker from Seminole.
'Child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect'
A study in the journal Pediatrics looked at 172 children who died between 1975 and 1995 and whose parents withheld medical care instead relying on religious rituals.
Of the 172 children, 140 fatalities were from conditions “for which survival rates with medical care would have exceeded 90 per cent,” according to the study entitled “Child fatalities from religion-motivated medical neglect.”
Eighteen more had expected survival rates of greater than 50 per cent.
“When faith healing is used to the exclusion of medical treatment, the number of preventable child fatalities and the associated suffering are substantial and warrant public concern,” authors of the oft-cited 1998 paper concluded. “Existing laws may be inadequate to protect children from this form of medical neglect.”
In a 2020 study, “Faith-Based Medical Neglect: for Providers and Policymakers,” it was pointed out that American First Amendment protections for religious freedom do not include the right to neglect a child, yet many states have laws allowing religious objectors to withhold preventive, screening and therapeutic medical care for children.
“Religious exemptions from child health and safety laws should be repealed so that children have equal rights to medical care.”
Human history is full of examples of child abuse and maltreatment justified on religious grounds, some of which still exist today. Severe corporal punishment, exorcism, forced labour, forced marriage, dangerous diets, conversion therapy, and sexual abuse all are still carried out in some corners of the world, acts that go unpunished by governments infected with superstition.
“Yet only faith-based medical neglect is protected in [U.S.] statute.”
Out on a Lim
Back in Canada, there are two different Criminal Code provisions that can be considered in the case of a death due to a parent withholding or not seeking medical treatment for any reason, including based on religious grounds. Namely, section 215 “failing to provide the necessaries of life’ and section 219 “criminal negligence.”
Theo Lim did not die and was out of custodial care with needed medical help for only a short time. Hopefully the abduction is unlikely to directly cause more health problems. In a Facebook video he posted on Thursday night Davis said his wife was in Burnaby Hospital apparently “catatonic.” By Saturday they were reunited. In the video he described his arrest by Emergency Response Team officers as being violent, and he claimed he was beaten.
Lim said that he is being charged with kidnapping and assault of a nurse from the facility where he abducted Theo.
“I did not assault her,” he said, adding that he struggled with her to get his son away.
He claims the entire case is a “crime against humanity,” and that they “abused my son,” by treating Theo and performing surgery at BC Children's.
Most people disagree.
“The media is currently being very, very kind with their current characterization of him and how he is impeding the treatments for Theo,” one commenter said on a Reddit thread about the case.
"It's narcissism 101 mixed with religious extremism,” another said. “I really hope the child is found safe, and the father is held accountable for the risk he put a child in."
Lim’s Facebook page is rife with recent COVID and measles conspiracy theories. As well as pro-Trump, anti-Ukraine rhetoric and several Biblical passages. He shares a video from YouTube about a pastor describing how when he was a baby all the doctors said there was no hope of survival from some medical condition, but then he was “anointed and he was healed.”
Comments from the public run the gamut from condemnation to support, including some extreme misunderstandings of the workings of the law, public health policy, and child protection.
“Our government is satanic,” said commenter going by Rodney Rider.
“The government does not own your child, nor should they ever,” said Scott Graham.”A hospitals job is to help, not control.”
But someone else who said he was a former neighbour of the family in Salmon Arm said they hoped his kids are safe “and can grow up and realize that some of the shit his dad’s been saying is wrong."
In the early hours of Sunday (March 16) morning, Lim posted a YouTube video entitled: "Please MCFD give our family our son back."
Later Sunday he posted a list of topics he wanted to talk to people about in some public way: "My brain is just reeling on things I want to share to educate, inspire and give hope to overcome. Making a list… "
He talks about the Mental Health Act, MCFD "over-reach" and supposed police mistreatment, and the "Medical Mafia, their devious ways to orchestrate chaos to give them more business."
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