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 ...
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?
Sez you. Man was created a vegitarian, and the pre-flood earth, a worldwide greehouse, produced enough nutrients in plant matter to support a healthy diet. Post flood, however, meat was on the menu, because the vapor canopy was gone, nutritious food was reduced significantly, and meat was protein rich. Ask the dinosaurs, they went exticnt because of it!
We have enzymes to disgest vegetable and animal products. Lions do not disgest grasses well. Horses don't handle, gastronomically speaking) beefburgers.
Poor Vegans just aren’t used to Earth’s gravity.
I saw this show about how how making a purely vegan marshmellow was considered the holy grail of veganism cooking.
One of Marshmellows main ingrediants is gelatin, which is a animal based product. And they have not been able to find anything that can mimic its qualities to properly create a completely vegan marshmellow that looks and tastes like one.
They had this one lady who had been had by some kosher food supply company that was supplying what they claimed was non-animal based gelatin. She used it and made a ton of money selling her vegan marshmellows. Then some strict vegans who suspected something wasn’t right, took it to be analyzed, and it came with back that is was animal based gelatin.
They interviewed these people and they looked like the walking dead. They were in their 50’s and looked and moved like they were in their 80’s. Those people should be the poster childs for anyone who believes the human body can support such a diet.
There are cultures that embrace vegitarianism, they replace the complex carbs omnivores get from meat with combinations of beans and rice. Most larger ones have Hindu histories.
What these cultures do not have, though which these parents stupidly had, was the stupid stupid extreme vegan nonsense that you don’t eat any dairy products.
None that are historically vegitarian have ever banned milk and dairy, that’s a uniquely modern wester 60s hippie leftover nonsensical creation.
Don’t even get me started on Veganism. My father was convinced by a group of charlatans that veganism is a “Biblical diet”, and would cure everything from warts to cancer. After having a lung resected about 4 years ago, he was taken in by these folks. After about 3 months of intensive carrot therapy, his doctor could find no cancer anywhere.
This “remission” was termed by the Biblical Diet group as a “cure”, and he refused to see his doctor anymore. Sure enough about 2 years later, he started to have problems with his hip, leg, spine and other areas. After some serious discussions with his children, grandchildren and other assorted friends and relatives, he reluctantly agreed to see a doctor last spring.
Not only had the cancer returned, it had metastasized to just about every part of his body, and he was gone within about 4 months of the diagnosis.
The thing that will forever stick in my craw about this whole vegan trip is that the bastards that put him on this expensive trip to no cure continued to call and send him information after he explained that he no longer was interested in the diet. My last conversation with these people was tempered only by the fact that I had just stepped off a red-eye from California to Massachusetts to see my father for the last time, and I was so tired and jet lagged that I didn’t have the wherewithal to tell these people where to stick their “cure”.
Sorry to vent, it’s still a very sore subject in my family, and my comments above are the most rational of anyone, believe it or not!
That’s worse. That’s a Darwin Award By Proxy.
I don’t think it has much to do with being a vegan. It is plain child abuse and neglect. This isn’t even a real vegan diet. Just like the kids who are extremely overweight, it is abuse.
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