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Did Veganism and Alternative Medicine Kill Breast-Fed Baby?
Filed under: In The News, Breast-Feeding
An 11-month-old baby's death in France was blamed on breast-feeding and the mother's vegan diet. Credit: Getty Images
Just ask the French couple sentenced to five years in jail for refusing to take their sick and undernourished 11-month-old daughter to a hospital, and instead treating her with advice from a 35-year-old alternative medicine book, Time magazine reports.
The case, which has attracted considerable attention in Europe, serves as a reminder that homeopathic treatment alone is hardly the answer to every health woe, and, in some cases, may even be tantamount to child abuse, according to Time.
Joel and Sergine Le Moaligou were accused of "neglect or food deprivation" after their daughter died due to their failure to follow a doctor's advice. But they escaped actual jail time after their sentence was partly suspended, Time reports.
In 2008, two months before their baby Louise's death, the strict vegans brought their baby to a doctor. The doctor suspected pneumonia and directed the couple to get their daughter a chest X-ray. Instead, they returned home and followed recipes they found in books on natural medicine for mustard, garlic and clay poultices. The couple's alternative "bible" was "The Natural Guide to Childhood," written in 1972 by Jeanette Dextreit, Time reports.
Louise had been losing weight -- she wasn't even 13 pounds at nearly 1 year old, but her parents canceled an appointment with her doctor. She died about a week later. Prosecutors pointed to breast-feeding and the mother's vegan diet as the causes for the baby's death, Time reports.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends babies be nourished exclusively on breast milk for the first six months; solid foods are gradually introduced one by one after that. It would be highly unusual for an 11-month-old to be solely breast-fed, but even more so in France, where breast-feeding is the lowest of any Western nation, according to Time.
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ReaderComments (Page 4 of 6)
4-07-2011 @ 8:38PM
Teresa said...It had nothing to do with whether the parents were feeding her what.
It had EVERYTHING to do with this: The Physician thought the child might have pneumonia and told the parents to get a chest x-ray. THEN, if the child had pneumonia, doctors would have given her antibiotics and maybe some breathing treatments. The parents chose to ignore modern medicine and instead resort to homeopathic methods from the 1700 and 1800s, when almost 50% of all children DIED of infection.
The child would have had a better chance of living if the parents had followed directions and had her treated. Not saying she WOULDN'T have died, just that she would have had a better chance of living.
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4-07-2011 @ 11:24PM
starfish said...Ok whoa. Reading this makes me sick. As a prego vegetarian, that sees a registered dietitian (who is vegan) and has studied nutrition (and hopefully will go back to become an RD)... And I used to be vegan (but stopped because I moved in with meat-eating in laws).. I think i can safely say that 1- you do NOT need meat in your diet!!! 2- you do NOT need dairy in your diet!!!! The hardest things to get for a vegan is iron and B-12. Protein- for you idiots that think protein is hard to get as a vegan- you could NOT be further from the truth. Obviously- you know nothing of nutrition therefore should NOT comment on something you know NOTHING about. Also- iron is not that hard to get if you KNOW what you're doing as a vegan! Neither is b-12- which BY THE WAY does not appear naturally in animals! It is found in animals because of the crap they eat but they do not make it! It is found in soil but since we are crazy about cleaning everything off, we wash off the natural vit-b-12. So yes, it is necessary to supplement b-12 but know that it does not naturally come from animals. Being vegan does take a lot of time, effort and planning but america overall is lazy (hello, we're not the fattest country without a reason!). And if you don't know what you're doing and want to be vegan for the "fad" of it, then yes you will become malnourished. But that can be true for ANYONE, meat or no meat. I mean, look at the overall health of the population of the US. It is not good!!!!!! And i can safely say, MOST people eat junk. ... People have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to not eating meat, everyone freaks out and starts talkin' when honestly- they apparently dont even know good sources of protein. .... So i suggest stop talking.
As for this article, the parents sound like they are a little off anyway- you cannot breastfeed a baby exclusively for a year and expect her to be healthy and at a healthy weight. Doesn't work. Also, if you trusted the doctors enough to go to them to find out what was wrong with your child, then you should have trusted them enough to treat the poor child for pneumonia (or at least let them confirm the diagnosis!). That's what is truly to blame here, not the veganism. Ugh.
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4-07-2011 @ 9:14PM
LillieFaerie said...Breastfeeding alone would not have caused it. My first child rarely had anything her first year, due to intolerance. The difference is, she could try if she wanted anything, and she had appropriate medical care. This child was killed by what sounds like lack of treatment for respiratory illness which would cause failure to thrive it would seem. Poor kid. Some old remidies still hold true and may not harm, but I would not do anything like a plaster to an infant, without expert advice. Those parents were dealing with the life of another human being, entrusted to them and that child should have had safe keeping. I've seen kids 9 pounds at 9 months and it is horrible, but they were due to extreme milk allergy. Some people, though, should rethink childbearing.
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4-07-2011 @ 10:11PM
Pat said...What kind of idiot would really think that an 11 month old baby should weigh only 13 pounds?
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4-07-2011 @ 10:22PM
Chris said...Flesh eater, vegetarian or vegan....the problem was that this "heroine" was only feeding that kid from her boob.....that kid was too old to be surviving on tit milk alone. I hate those nursing mothers....I think they get their rocks off that way.
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4-07-2011 @ 10:57PM
Tyler Fisher said...Have you vegans ever wondered why it is you have to eat so much more food than normal people? It's because the human digestive system is terribly inefficient at breaking down plant matter. So unless you want to start eating your own feces, have fun eating ten times more than regular people just to survive
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4-08-2011 @ 12:03AM
starfish said...Actually...it's because our body is SO efficient at eating this way that we eat more... Our body is able to break it down so fast, that we get hungry sooner and eat more. But meat typically clogs digestive track because it takes so much energy to break it down. This is why, when you eat a big meaty meal, you want to lay down and take a siesta- because of all the energy it takes our bodies to break it down. When you eat a healthful vegan/plant based meal, you hardly have that sluggish weighed down feeling, instead feeling much more energized.
4-07-2011 @ 11:33PM
Joylandusa said...I don't have to eat more than anyone. I usually eat less. People half my age can't keep up with me. I look better than most and feel better.Over eaters eat themselves to death. I"m saying that people need to think about how meat ends up on your plate. You need to feel for the animal that wasn't lucky by being there. Feel something for other living things. Get to know a cow. If you wouldn't want your throat slit, why be responsible for it happening to something else? Half of the animals killed would live if you only ate half of the meat you eat now.Whatever!
4-07-2011 @ 11:51PM
Tyler Fisher said...Wow, what an ignorant thing to say starfish. Animals that are strictly herbivores have a hard time digesting plant material, but you think that you as an animal which is an omnivore which through the evolutionary process has become even worse at digesting plant material than we once were and actually become better at digesting meat, is more efficient at digesting plants than they are? Don't try and talk about biological functions with a biology major, especially if you're going to spell digestive TRACT, digestive track.
4-08-2011 @ 12:10AM
starfish said...Whatever, darling. My bad on the typo with "track"/"tract" (It's funny that people always point out grammatical mistakes like that as if it helps their point..) Anyway, I've done my research and personally don't care if you supposedly are working on obtaining/already have a degree in biology- because I have studied nutrition and speak often with a vegan registered dietitian. It appears to me, that you are the ignorant one.
4-08-2011 @ 12:50AM
Tyler Fisher said...You know what I think is funny? The fact that you throw my degree to the wayside and speak of it as if it's unimportant, but yet in the very next breath you start talking about your degree and your friends degree as if this gives you supreme authority over the subject matter. Also, yes I did point out your grammatical mistake in this instance because if you don't even know the correct name of the organ system which you're referring how can anyone expect anything deeper about the topic than "well it digests stuff." Especially an organ system as simple to spell as digestive tract. It's funny that I've given you facts and you've given me nothing but "well my friend said this" and " I thought I heard this one time in my nutrition class." I think it's also funny that you claim that you've "studied" nutrition rather than saying I have a degree in nutrition, or even "I'm a nutritionist." Taking one class on something one time in no way makes you an expert on the topic. Even if you have taken several classes on the topic, why is it that you never finished. These are all things that call your "credibility" into question. Oh and one last little fact to completely destroy your original argument, if it takes less energy to digest something you would eat less of it, not more. The less energy it takes to digest something, the more energy you have to expend (via exercising, etc.) to burn off the calories that you've eaten. Also your body has a metabolism that needs a basic caloric intake to survive, so if you get less calories, and therefor less energy, out of a food you would need to eat a lot more of that food just to survive. Oh and one last little comment for you, the word ignorant means lacking knowledge or information about something, which in this area describes you perfectly
4-07-2011 @ 10:54PM
Joylandusa said...Look at all the fat meat eating people. Do you think you are better than the animal you are eating? You can be healthy by being vegan. You have got to eat right as a vegan as everyone else should. There are some unhealthy meat eaters as well. I think it's great that there are some people that will give up their meat to help some other living thing live. You can get all the body needs from being a vegan if you eat right.
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4-07-2011 @ 10:58PM
Tyler Fisher said...plants are living things too. Did they not cover that in your biology class in the 6th grade?
4-07-2011 @ 11:14PM
Joylandusa said...If it has a brain, I'm not eating it. I'm not sure that plants feel pain. Nuts and grains can be had without killing anything.
4-07-2011 @ 11:45PM
Tyler Fisher said...not true. Plants are living things. They were here long before you or I, and by eating nuts and things you are very much so killing something. So basically your whole argument is, I don't want to kill anything for food, but really I just don't want to kill something that can look at me while I kill it. Unless you practice photosynthesis and get all of your energy from the sun, you're killing something for that meal on your plate. Hypocrite
4-08-2011 @ 8:49AM
Joylandusa said...Tyler, For an educated person, you don't sound like it. I'd say you are an educated fool. You don't have any common sense.
4-08-2011 @ 12:23PM
Tyler Fisher said...Oh really? How so? Are you just getting frustrated because you aren't educated and didn't know that plants are living organisms? That's what it sounds like to me. "Oh plants are not alive and me eating them doesn't kill anything." Actually it does. That's a fact. " I don't want to kill anything to get my food." This is ignorance because you are KILLING plants for your food. Actually the only fool here is you.
4-07-2011 @ 11:28PM
voguecln said...Breastmilk formulates itself - the mom would get sick before the child suffered greatly. Likely the baby had a genetic condition that often presents in low birth weight and "failure to thrive" diagonses - cystic fibrosis
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4-07-2011 @ 11:43PM
Dolores said...MEAT - IT'S WHAT'S ROTTING IN YOUR COLON. ENJOY!
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4-08-2011 @ 12:07AM
Tyler Fisher said...poop doesn't rot. Just thought you should know that