TMZ broke the story ... Val was rushed to the hospital Monday night after he started bleeding from the throat. Doctors at UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica operated immediately and found a tumor. We're told the surgery was invasive ... they needed to enlarge a path to facilitate breathing.
Family members tell TMZ ... Val has known about the tumor since Summer. He had trouble speaking and his neck swelled to the point he covered it up with scarves and other clothing items.
The family members say they urged Val to seek treatment but he would have none of it because of his Christian Science beliefs. They say he shunned medical treatment and anyone who persisted got cut out of his life.
Christian Science followers generally believe prayer heals, not medical treatment.
The family says Val would never confess to pain because it was an admission that prayer didn't work, but when he started coughing up blood Monday his options ran out.
The family is hopeful because Val seems somewhat more receptive to treatment.
We reached out to the Christian Science Church ... so far no word back.
Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices belonging to the metaphysical family of new religious movements.It was developed in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), who argued in her book Science and Health (1875) that sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the King James Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.
Eddy and 26 followers were granted a charter in 1879 to found the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in 1894 the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts.[5] In the early 20th century Christian Science became the fastest growing religion in the United States, with nearly 270,000 members there by 1936, a figure that had declined by 1990 to just over 100,000. The church is known for its newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 1950 and 2002, and for its Reading Rooms, which are open to the public in around 1,200 cities.
Eddy described Christian Science as a return to "primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing." There are key differences between Christian Science theology and that of orthodox Christianity. In particular, adherents subscribe to a radical form of philosophical idealism, believing that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion.[1This includes the view that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated, not by medicine, but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.
The church does not require that Christian Scientists avoid all medical care – adherents use dentists, optometrists, obstetricians, physicians for broken bones, and vaccination when required by law – but maintains that Christian Science prayer is most effective when not combined with medicine. Between the 1880s and 1990s the avoidance of medical treatment was blamed for the deaths of several adherents and their children; parents and others were prosecuted for manslaughter or neglect, and in a few cases convicted.
Original Text From：http://www.tmz.com/2015/02/02/val-kilmer-christian-science-church-tumor-medical-treatment/
