Religion is often against advances in medicine and technology.

Christian preachers opposed Ben Franklin's invention of the lightning rod
because they thought it was thwarting god's will to send down lightning
bolts on sinners. In the early 1800s, when inoculations were just being
developed, Catholics were forbidden to get them while Protestants were being
saved from disease. In recent times, fundamentalist Muslim clerics have been
telling people that polio vaccines are an American plot to sterilize them.
Christian and Muslim clerics are often opposed to the use of condoms.
Recently in the U. S., mass vaccinations for the prevention of HPV, which is
a sexually transmitted infection that can lead to cervical cancer in women,
have been stopped due to complaints from Christian fundamentalists that it
would encourage sexual activity. The Bush administration opposed funding
family planning in condom distribution in Third World African countries,
where AIDS is rampant.

Various religions have some medical proceudres of their own. In Judaism, the
Old Testament sets forth the procedure for circumcision of male infants by
have a rabii "mohel" cut and orally suck the foreskin off the male member --
a disgusting unhealthy procedure with disturbing implications. It is not a
practice relegated to the distant past. In 2005, Jewish NY City mayor
Michael Bloomberg stopped the city's health authorities from banning the
procedure, after it casued a babie's death. His grounds for inaction were
based on "religious freedom".

In some parts of Muslim Africa, young girls are subjected to a form of
circumcision in which parts of the labia and the clitoris are sliced off. In
United States, adherence of the Christian Scientist sect are sometimes
brought up on legal charges for denying medical care to their children.
Adherence of the Jehovah witnesses sect refused permission for their
children to receive blood transfusions.