News coverage about so-called vegan parents starving thier child

[Guest guest]

Howdy y'all,

 

I haven't posted in awhile, but I just had to write about a very

disturbing news article I saw today. When I checked my mail,

I saw a news story about a child starving to death on a vegan diet.

And I thought " HUH? " I googled this, and the articles all have

headlines like " Murder Verdict for Vegan Parents " and " Child Starves

to Death on Vegan Diet. " And I found lots of other news articles

from previous cases around the world. What really irks me is that

the so-called vegan parents in these articles didn't supplement with

B12 and/or didn't breast feed the child. And the articles act like

this is normal for a vegan parents, as if being vegan were a good

reason for a mother NOT to breast-feed her own child. Talk about

misinformation!!!! Does this make anyone else angry? I guess this

really struck a nerve with my today because I just visited my uncles

a couple days ago. They live in a small community of dairy farmers

in north Texas, and they were quite befuddled by the idea of living

without dairy products. One of them asked, " Well, what do you feed

your baby if you have children? Soy milk or rice milk, I guess? " I

couldn't even explain it because the people in the room were all too

busy talking to each other to even listen to me. People like my

uncles will see this national news headline " Murder Verdict for

Vegan Parents, " and without even reading it, they'll think this

confirms their suspicions that a vegan diet really is crazy and

harmful. It makes me so mad because it is not even an appropriate

headline to describe what happened.

 

The most complete article I found was this one from the local

Atlanta, Georgia, newspaper:

 

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2007/05/02/050

3metvegan.html

 

May 3, 2007 – " Murder Verdict for Vegan Parents " is the headline. I

suppose the sensationalism of the word " vegan " sells more

newspapers, but if you read the news story, a much more responsible

headline would have been " Murder Verdict for Negligent Parents. "

The child was born in a bathtub and never taken to a doctor while

alive. The prosecuting attorney claims that the parents

intentionally underfed the child with small amounts of apple juice

and soy milk. (The mother later testified to feeding the baby some

breast milk.) According to the prosecuting attorney, when the

parents were faced with charges after the child died, they claimed

at first that they had never fed the baby breast milk and used the

vegan lifestyle to try to get a lighter sentence. (It didn't work.)

The article doesn't mention the fact that there is nothing about

being vegan that prohibits mothers from breastfeeding their babies.

So the fact that the parents were so-called vegan and fed their baby

a so-called vegan diet has nothing to do with what happened. The

parents could have undernourished their child by feeding him small

amounts of beef broth in lieu of breast milk; in that case, would

the headline have been " Murder Verdict for Meat-Eating Parents " ?

It's a simple case of neglect and abuse by the parents, and the word

Vegan has no place in the title.

 

OOOOOH! This makes me so mad. I wouldn't be surprised if I get this

article forwarded to me by my carnivorous friends/family who will

say, you see, we're right, begin vegan is dangerous! UGH! Doesn't

it seem like the news media is deliberating misleading people by

writing these kinds of headlines? What do y'all think?

 

Here are some other articles I found with similar anti-vegan

headlines, along with what I thought about them.

 

April 30, 2002 – Vegan couple arrested for reckless endangerment and

endangering the welfare of a child for failing to properly feed and

care for their baby. According to the article, the parents denied

the child breast milk AND formula. It appears that the parents fed

the newborn child only nuts, fruits, and vegetables. The parents

refused to get medical help for the child's malnutrition. The

article makes no effort to clarify that vegans do feed their

children breast milk and that vegan breast milk with B12

supplementation can provide proper nutrition for healthy infants.

This article makes it sound as if vegans are not allowed to feed

breast milk to their babies.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,51494,00.html

 

2005 - " Vegan couple cleared of starving baby, guilty of child

neglect " is the headline. Family with 5 children and raw foods

diet, convicted of neglect of four surviving children, after 18-

month-old child dies due to weakened immune system caused by

congenital defect. (You have to read the article carefully to see

the infant's cause of death was not attributed to the vegan diet.)

The children of the raw-food couple received breast milk during

their first three months as infants.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/11/08/child.starved/index.html

 

2002: Seventh Day Adventist vegan couple whose baby died at the age

of 6 months. The web site says that the mother's breast milk lacked

the B12 vitamin, and that the baby died due to complications

associated with a vitamin B12 deficiency, including brain damage and

anemia. The web site admits that " Nutrition Foundation Scientific

Committee chairman Dr Cliff Tasman-Jones says B12 injections are

readily available and will fix any imbalance. " The web site

continues in its markedly anti-vegan rhetoric, despite the

indications that the only problem here was a lack of B12

supplementation. I've never heard anything about being vegan that

prohibits a person from taking B12 supplements, and yet the web site

blames the child's death on a vegan diet.

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/child_abuse.html

 

What do y'all think? Is there anything we can do about all this

misleading information in the news media?

 

Angry and frustrated,

Rachel