Vegans Face Prosecution
Tuesday, June 10th 2008
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I Spit My Green Beans Out As A Twelve Year Old And Ate A Whole Lot Of Meat
A little girl in Britain is sick, suffering from, amongst other things, rickets and several pathological fractures at the age of twelve years old. Such is the case because her parents have raised her on a strict vegan diet.
A 12-year-old girl in Scotland brought up by her parents on a strict vegan diet has been admitted to hospital with a degenerative bone condition said to have left her with the spine of an 80-year-old woman.
Doctors are under pressure to report the couple to police and social workers amid concerns that her health and welfare may have been neglected in pursuit of their dietary beliefs.
This wouldn’t be the first time that vegan parents were prosecuted for neglect. An infamous case in Georgia last year involved parents whose attempt at weaning their newborn along on a strict vegan diet led to his death and their life sentences. I’ll stay away from passing judgment on a specific case based on some blurb article in The Times. That said, it really is unacceptable to neglect children like this based on parental beliefs.
I’m drawing a line here admittedly. In the past I’ve been sympathetic to parents circumcising their children, I’ve supported the decisions of children young adults, who have reached a level of comprehension, to forgo medical treatment even when it appears clear their parents were influencing such a decision. Serving your child a strict vegan diet goes beyond that though. We’re discussing risk versus reward here and while you’d hate to have the government and society weighing every parental decision on such a scale in hindsight, there are things that clearly cannot be accepted.
What makes cases like this difficult is that we (or I at least) like to imagine negligence as something of lack of caring and lack of action. True, in vegan cases there is usually some of that. For instance, it is hard to imagine many of these children getting to the point they do if they had gone to recommended pediatrician visits. But, these aren’t parents trying to starve their children. They often come across as…well, moronic but not malicious.
That makes it tough, but it shouldn’t excuse it. We should expect parents to either know that such diets are bound to harm their children or, if uninformed about infant and children nutrition, to seek out information from reputable sources. Anything less has to amount to negligence, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t the state strive to protect its most hapless charges by reprimanding parents who harm their children by essentially starving them even if such isn’t through malice?
I think the answer has to be ‘yes’.
Interesting blog, I find it ironic that parents of morbidly obese children aren’t going to jail, when you think of all of the co-morbidities that come with obesity. Many of these kids are malnourished even though they may look overfed. Now that is child abuse, and it is way more rampant than veganism, hence not as novel.
Give me a break - the “leading nutritionist” from that article is anonymous! They also claim that vit. D is “found only in liver, oily fish, and dairy.” This is pure bullshit. Vit D is found in dairy products artificially FORTIFIED with it. It’s also in soymilk, rice milk, sandwich bread, cereal, multivitamins, etc. etc.
Vegan diets are not the problem in these 2 cases. Rather, the sheer stupidity of the parents is. One cannot rightly make the blanket claim that vegan diets cause or even contribute to malnutrition. Simply put, any diet, whether plant-based or not, if deficient in variety or volume can just as easily lead to health problems. The American Dietetic Association (the rulebook about nutrition for physicians) has documented countless times that vegan diets are easily safe and nutritious for everyone from athletes to babies, to pregnant women. Like Marie said, these cases get a ton of attention in part due to their novelty, in part due to advocacy from American animal-based agriculture interest groups (some of the most wealthy and powerful in the world), and also due to the pre-conceived public bias that vegans are, well, freaks.
From an annecdotal perspective, I also have to wonder how many vegan babies you have come across first hand. I have met at least 15 or so - all have been happy and healthy. As for highly regarded people in the medical community who also strictly adhere to plant-based diets and even recommend them to their patients - President Bush’s cardiologist (believe it or not), a Harvard cheif resident of the general surgery dept, and even Dr. Henry Heimlich!
The stigma that vegan diets are deficient is protein, vitamins, or calcium is simply false. B12 is everywhere now, from cereal, to energy bars, to soy milk (which has as much, if not more calcium than dairy milk), and protein deficiency is near impossible to find in any individual who eats a variety of foods. I know at this point I’m probably proselytizing (sorry) but if UFC champion Mac Danzig, Olympian Carl Lewis, 6 time ironman champion Dave Scott, and World Champion ultramarathon runner Scott Jurek can get enough protein from vegan (not even just vegetarian) diets, anyone can.
Colin - I think you’re a really intelligent guy, I think you’re going to be a great physician, and I love your website. But as a girl who grew up LOVING steaks and chili cheese dogs, and who has a mother who grew up on dairy farms, but who has now been vegan for over 7 years, I have to say that your claim that vegan diets are “bound to harm children” is a highly ignorant statement.