Posted on 06/11/2008 10:38:39 AM PDT by Dawnsblood
A girl of 12 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.
Doctors are under pressure to report the couple, from Glasgow, to police and social workers amid concerns her health and welfare may have been neglected in pursuit of their beliefs.
The youngster, fed on a strict meat- and dairy-free diet from birth, is being treated at the city’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children. She is said to have a severe form of rickets and to have suffered a number of fractured bones. The condition is caused by a lack of vitamin D, which is needed to absorb calcium and is found in liver, oily fish and dairy produce.
Dr Faisal Ahmed, the consultant treating the child, said he believed the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet needed to be highlighted. “Something like this needs publicity,” he said. However, he refused to blame the parents, who are understood to be well-known figures in Glasgow’s vegan community: “We shouldn’t name and shame . Mum feels guilty about the whole thing and feels bad about it.”
Jonathan Sher, head of policy at Children in Scotland, said: “If the consequence of parental behaviour is physical, mental or emotional harm to a child, then the child protection system should become involved.” Bill Aitken, justice spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, added: “If the youngster is coming to clinical harm, something must be done.”
In 2001, British vegans Hazmik and Garabet Manuelyan, from Staines, were sentenced to three years’ community rehabilitation after they admitted starving daughter Arenai, 10 months, to death. She had been fed nothing but breast milk, raw fruit, vegetables and nuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
“Mum feels guilty about the whole thing and feels bad about it.”
pfffffftttt!
“She had been fed nothing but breast milk”
isnt that an animal product?
Could this be what’s wrong with the republicans?
Get some milk and steak into those people! STAT!
If a person is going to adhere to a diet like this, they need to make sure and supplement it with vitamins. Otherwise, things like this happen.
People do selfish, stupid things in large part because society has determined that shame is wrong. Shame is a guiding force in cultural morality and individual behavior. Western culture abandoned it with the advent of moral relativism. “Who are we to make another feel shame,” the moral relativist asks. “Whose to say what a shameful act is?”
Starving your child is a shameful act. The parents should be publicly humiliated so that the others in their demented, self-centered, holier-than-thou community will disband and feed their children according to what we know to be a good and healthy diet.
Bruce Freidrick will spin this like a washing machine.
Here's some of it, paraphrased. Much better in person. Try YouTube, if you're interested:
"Has anybody ever seen a healthy vegetarian? They're all underweight. I had a buddy in California and we went out to dinner before a show one night. On the way there, he said, 'I feel sick. That vegetarian soup must have had beef broth in it'. Beef broth. Wow. [s] You're a manly man[/s]."
Is John Kerry a vegan? He has no spine at all.
Funny, those don't sound like Scottish names.
When my kids were in public school there was a kid like this. Little boy whose parents forced him to be a vegan. He was Significantly smaller than the other kids. It also effected his mental capabilities.
Big surprise. /sarc
IMO parents who do this should be charged with child abuse.
“Vegan girl, 12, ‘has spine of 80-year-old’”
Child abuse and neglect.
Where is my cheeseburger?
Killing of one’s children with a fad diet is certainly one way to win a Darwin.
>> said to have left her with the spine of an 80-year-old. <<
You’re presuming that 80-year old is named John McCain?
This underscores why vegans need to take nutritional supplements, especially Vitamin B12. Their food choices do not always contain all the vitamins and minerals to maintain a healthy body. This is especially true for growing children. Hope this girl improves health wise.
bookamrk
If the parents took their child to a doctor when they started to notice bad symptoms, I would not blame them.
Parents that take the time and effort to work on their child’s diet are usually not bad parents. Sounds like they just need some education.
If, however, they let the child suffer with illness for a substantial time, or they didn’t adhere to much the same diet themselves, I think there should be more consequences.
Rickets usually show up much earlier than this, with stunted growth or limb malformation. I have family members who adopted from Russia. The children there have to be checked for this, because they are malnourished and there isn’t that much sunlight near the arctic circle.
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