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.
One doesn’t simply put a dietary practice ahead of a child’s health unless that practice comes from deeply held religious beliefs.
I saw that...
Child was sacrificed on a vegan altar.
Aren't these people vegan "moderates"? I mean, they had a kid - I thought orthodox vegans were supposed to eschew reproduction and abort all fetal "accidents" as to not subject mother earth to more virulent, destructive, wasteful, worthless humans. Maybe this is Gaea's punishment for their apostasy.
Amen...
isnt that an animal product?
Depends on Mom.
“who are understood to be well-known figures in Glasgow’s vegan community”
What is a “vegan community”?
A group of bad hunters.
The question: "Why should I not do as I please within the law, so long as I harm no-one else?" would, at all earlier times, have drawn one or both of the answers: "Because it offends God" or "Because you will become a social outcast".
The first of these has no force for our new elites, who do not believe in God; the second is not only without force for them, it is without meaning. To exclude a person from one's drawing-room because their personal pleasures are aberrant would be "discrimination". Larry Flynt is an honored and effective member of the Clinton team...
Etc.
Thanks for your post.
What you said, except substitute “who’s” for “whose.” ;)
Trial begins for a Scottsdale vegan who starved his kids [Phoenix]
Tue Jun 03, 2008
Last year, Blair Parker saw his wife, Kimu, sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in the slow starvation of the Scottsdale couple’s three children. With his trial under way today, he’s hoping to avoid the same tough penalty. (snip)
The Parkers forced their home-schooled kids on a low-calorie Vegan diet for years and didn’t reverse course even as the kids’ bodies began wasting away.
The Parkers were arrested in April 2005 after one of their daughters, 3-year-old Zion, began having seizures and they called authorities, who were shocked at the girl’s appearance. Zion weighed only 13 pounds and was suffering from extreme malnutrition. (snip)
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2008/06/trial_to_begin_this_week_for_h.php
They were the weediest, sickliest, pasty-skinned little kids you ever saw. I don't remember their intellectual capabilities -- but they caught every bug going around the school, never played on the playground, pretty pathetic.
The dad of one of the other kids in carpool was a pediatrician and a close friend of my parents, and I remember them discussing in my hearing what they could do about it, but not whether they were going to try what's now called an "intervention" or report the parents to somebody. Never heard what came of it, all of that was way above my pay grade.
But the pediatrician said that vitamin supplements and stuff like that wouldn't do the trick, that there were nutrients that growing kids needed that you could only get from milk, meat, fish and eggs. He said once you were finished growing, you could abuse your body a whole lot more and get away with it.
Those Vegans better watch out - the United Federation of Planets might send a starship to investigate.
Humans are supposed to eat meat. Had pre-man and early man not developed into meat eaters, the human race would not have developed a high level of intelligence. Meat is nutritionally dense, while plant matter is nutritionally sparse. Eating meat gave man time to do other things like developing tools and other technological innovations.
Animals that eat only plant food have to graze most of the time to get enough nutrients. Compare a cow to a lion. A cow has to graze all day, while a lion may eat only 2-3 weeks.
About the other vegan morons mentioned in the article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/southern_counties/3172027.stm
Great post!
Remember when folks would actually blush?
When was the last time we read of, or actually saw a person blush.
More rare than hen’s teeth!
Absolutely blame the parents, there is nothing different from this sort of abuse, and the parents who refuse to let their child see a doctor and rather just pray. Other than this sort of abuse went on for YEARS to get this girl in this state.
This poor girl has been sacrificed due to her parents idiotic beliefs. There are pleanty of children that grow up in cultures that do not eat meat and are healthy, none ignore dairy and meat.. this is just stupid, and guarantees your child this sort of pain.
These parents put their lifestyle above their child, and that is inexcusable.
low-fat and no-fat (1% or skim) dairy is extremely important for a girl's/woman's bone health. Bonus: calcium helps to keep a woman slim as well as keep her bones strong
another weight loss secret --> eat protein found in 3 oz portions of grass fed beef, poultry, and pork as well as wild fish caught in the U.S. (no farm fed fish or chicken)
chow down on lots of green vegetables, tomatoes, etc.
and CHEAT once a week on ONLY 1 of your favorite foods... :o)
I’m betting most vegans are strong believers in evolution and believe that man developed from some previous species.
We have CANINE TEETH. We are NOT vegetarians.
That child was sacrificed on the vegan altar,
and in America, many children are sacrificed on the pagan altar.
I’d better clarify what I mean before I get pounced on. Not taking a child to a hospital because of a belief that god will step in and perform a miracle is criminal. Faith healing in and of itself is fine assuming the healing actually occurs.
Yep, the pediatrician is absoultely right.
Calcium and vitamin D are not options in a growing body. Vitamin D is created by the skin when exposed to sunlight... its also supplimentally added to milk in the industrialized world, it helps your body absorb and process calcium (found in dairy) into bone.
This child has rickets because of lack of calcium and vitamin d. This is insufferable. There are children that grow up healthy and happy in many cultures that do not eat meat.. but you cannot deny children dairy and meat and expect them to not have horrible problems most likely for life. These parents are nut jobs to have forced this on theri child.
That "morality" can only come about by rejection of Biblical truths.
Same reason that the leftists believe we shouldn't use the earth's resources.
Ron White is a comedic genius. Love the guy!
“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.”
I presume you are not talking about the standard American diet that has half of the children in America obese and/or pre-diabetic and on the road to serious cardiovascular disease as they age.
It is not shameful that parents try, albeit misguided, to avoid such a diet.
>> You’re presuming that 80-year old is named John McCain?
Oh, I think McCain’s spine is OK.
While we’re on the subject of McCain’s medical condition, he’s also got plenty of “cheek” and his “gall” bladder is definitely full! And the bone density in his head is... well, dense.
On the other hand, he suffers from a debilitating cranial-rectal impaction.
“We shouldn’t name and shame . Mum feels guilty about the whole thing and feels bad about it.”
I bet you would name and shame if she SHOT her daughter in the spine with one of those evil handguns. It amounts to pretty much the same thing, doesn’t it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.