When you think of pastors giving people bad advice about AIDS, you think of Catholics in Africa. When you think of pastors telling patients that God, and not Western medicine, can heal them, you think of either Christian Scientists or wacko American fundamentalists.

But some Pentecostal preachers are advising their AIDS-afflicted patients to give up their antivirals—in England!

Since this “survey” is anecdotal, I’ll give just a brief summary of the BBC’s recent report:

The Children’s HIV Association surveyed 19 doctors and health professionals working with babies and children in England; its members had reported hearing anecdotal evidence of HIV patients deciding to stop taking their anti-retroviral drugs because their pastors had told them to do so. Among 10 doctors who said they had encountered the problem in the last five years, 29 of their patients had reported being put under pressure to stop taking medicine and at least 11 had done so. The doctors and health professionals reported a variety of cases: . . . The healthcare workers also reported that some patients had been told by their pastors they would be healed by prayer or by drinking blessed water.

Why give up the drugs? Apparently because it gives God a chance to effect the cure.

Pentecostals and other Christians see healing, like speaking in tongues, as a sign of the presence of God. Pentecostal pastor Stevo Atanasio, from the East London Christian Church, said that among his congregation, blind people had recovered sight, deaf people had heard again, and what were considered terminal illnesses had been cured.

And the amputees?

“We don’t say to people ‘don’t take your medication don’t go to the doctor’. I mean we never say that,” he said. “But we believe that the first healing comes from inside, it’s a spiritual healing. Some people are hurt, they have broken hearts. If you are healed from inside, then you are healed from outside as well.”

So far I know of no evidence that spirituality can kill viruses.

Now this is only a small number of cases, but remember that one life lost over such stupidity is one life too many, especially when it’s a young child. Truly, telling your flock to give up AIDS drugs should be a criminal offense.

The BBC reports that Pentecostalism is growing quickly in the UK: The number of Pentecostal churches in London, for example, has doubled since 2005.

What’s going on over there? Are Brits reverting to the religious lunacy of the U.S.?

h/t: Steve