This is an inter­est­ing case. The fam­ily of a woman who died after being bit­ten while hand­ling a rattlesnake dur­ing a reli­gious ser­vice have sued the hos­pital she was taken to for fail­ing to cor­rectly treat her. They claim

After being taken into the hos­pital at 8:09 p.m., Long said she was hav­ing trouble breath­ing, and asked for oxy­gen. Hos­pital employ­ees gave her a port­able, oscil­lat­ing fan as they allegedly “snickered and made derog­at­ory com­ments” to employ­ees — and Long’s fam­ily — about the reli­gious beliefs and cir­cum­stances under which she was bitten.

Her blood pres­sure dropped; her heart rate went up; her neck, face and tongue swelled; and she went into shock. How­ever, a doc­tor failed to prop­erly treat her and did not put in a tube to help her breathe, accord­ing to the lawsuit.

At 8:28 p.m., hos­pital per­son­nel con­tac­ted the air ambu­lance ser­vice. When the heli­copter arrived 12 minutes later, the crew asked the doc­tor to put in a tube to help Long breathe, but the doc­tor said her air­way was not the prob­lem and told the flight crew to get her to Lex­ing­ton quickly, the suit says.

Long’s heart stopped on the way. She was pro­nounced dead at 10:50 p.m. at the Uni­ver­sity of Ken­tucky Med­ical Center.

Ser­i­ous alleg­a­tions. While, per­son­ally, I think any­one who delib­er­ately ant­ag­on­ised a leth­ally venom­ous animal for recre­ation pretty much deserves any­thing they get, it is not the the place of the hos­pital to take that stance, and they have a respons­ib­il­ity to offer treat­ment, regard­less of how the injury was sus­tained. I’m no tox­ic­o­lo­gist, but I do know that most rattlesnake venom attacks the heart and/​or blood dir­ectly, so the cause of death was likely not her breath­ing dif­fi­culty, just like the Doc­tor said, although that doesn’t jus­tify the atti­tude of the hos­pital staff, if this report is to be believed.

The art­icle doesn’t make it clear, but I’d be will­ing to bet that while the deceased’s fam­ily are suing the hos­pital for fail­ing to cor­rectly treat her, they won’t be overly down on God for let­ting the snake bite her in the first place.