Lock These Parents Up
And throw away the key. ‘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.
The girl, who has been fed on a strict meat and dairy-free diet from birth, 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. Decalcification leads to the bones becoming brittle and can cause curvature of the spine.
Dr Faisal Ahmed, the consultant paediatrician treating the child at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow, declined to discuss the specific case. He said, however, that he believed the dangers of forcing children to follow a strict vegan diet needed to be highlighted.
One leading nutritionist, who asked not to be named, said: “In most instances, the parents who are imposing this very restrictive and potentially hazardous diet are not themselves brought up as vegans. They are imposing on their children something . . . which we do not know enough about to know it is safe.”
Don Surber summarizes it quite well: “Parents love animals so much that they nearly kill their daughter.”
There are several things that make this case especially bad. First of all, school officials. If she was so malnourished that it came to this, shouldn’t have some responsible adult noticed sooner? The report said she’d had several fractures due to weak bones before, they must have noticed she wasn’t well.
Even more terrible is the case they mention in passing:
Three years community service for starving your baby to DEATH?!!!!! Unless both parents can be shown to be mentally retarded that sentence is simply obcene. Your baby is a person, not a toy you can make or break.
Personally I can accept veganism as a lifestyle, even if there’s nothing "natural" about it. In fact, I can even accept having your children follow that lifestyle but ONLY and this is essential, if you can show that there is NO HARM committed upon their health. Your ethical viewpoint does NOT trump the health of your child. The problem isn’t as much that these parents are vegans as they are fundamentalist freaks (other less polite words come to mind). Any responsible parent wanting to raise a child while having dietary rules goes to the doctor and to a child nutritionist and makes absolutely sure that the rules don’t harm the child.
Obviously the parents should be locked up for abuse to their child. However, I hope this case isn’t blown out of proportion (like many things are in the media) and make vegans feel like outcasts. I’m not a vegan myself, and don’t know any strict vegans (I have two vegetarian friends), but I do think that with proper planning, veganism could probably work for any child. I’m not a nutritionist though, so I’m not sure.
Still, it’s clear that in this case that proper planning probably wasn’t used.