Veg*n ideology

Ideologic Vegetarianism

Much of my professional life has been spent studying health fraud, quackery, and related misinformation, and their impact on people's lives. I have discerned a recurrent sequence of behaviors: First, the prospective vegetarian eliminates reportedly unhealthful foods from his or her diet, beginning with foods that society considers "bad for you" (e.g., sugar, coffee, and white bread). Next, if concerns about food safety grow to neurotic proportions, the person scrutinizes labels and worries about ingredients indicated by terms he doesn't understand. Then he may patronize health food stores, where clerks and publications can feed his phobias. He may treat modern foods as poisonous. Finally, if he deems vegetarianism not restrictive enough, the "health foodist" may turn to veganism. In my opinion, it is at this point that vegetarianism becomes hazardous, especially for children.

The case of Sonja and Khachadour Atikian illustrates what can happen to those seduced by ideologic vegetarianism. The Atikians were ÃmigrÃs from Lebanon who because of unrelenting media barrages focusing on environmental pollution, diet, and health became overly concerned about the safety and healthfulness of modern foods. Sonja Atikian began shopping at health food stores instead of supermarkets. Gerhardt Hanswille, a self-styled herbalist from Germany, taught classes in the rear of a health food store she patronized. Although Hanswille was not licensed to practice medicine, he saw 40 to 45 "patients" day. He treated Ms. Atikian for a sore knee, and she took some of his courses. Hanswille taught that: (a) people should not kill animals, nor consume animal products; (b) God intended cow's milk to be food for calves, not human babies; (c) eating eggs deprives hens of fulfilling their divinely intended role as mothers; (d) people should not poison themselves or the earth with the unnatural products of modern living; (e) using herbs both as food and as medicine is God's way; and (f) the medicines of doctors are poisons. "Choose whom you will believe," said Hanswille, "me or the doctors. You can't have it both ways."

Ms. Atikian chose poorly. Except for eating fish occasionally, she followed the herbalist's advice during pregnancy. She delivered a healthy 8.2-lb girl named Loreie. Hanswille convinced the Atikians that the newborn would become a superbaby if they gave her a vegetarian diet of raw, organic foods. He dissuaded them from having the infant immunized and from continuing to see a pediatrician. And he induced them to rely on him for healthcare advice.

Four and a half months after her birth, Lorie's weight was still at the 75th percentile, but when she was 11 months old, breast-feeding her sole source of animal food discontinued. Fed only fruits, vegetables, and rice, she eventually stopped growing, slept more and more, and had more and more infections. As the baby's health spiraled downward, Hanswille assured the parents that her decline was merely "the poisons coming out of her body" and that she would eventually become the superbaby they desired. In 1987, 17-month-old Loreie died of bronchial pneumonia complicated by severe malnutrition. She weighed 111/4 lbs. The Atikians were charged with failing to provide their daughter with the "necessaries of life." Their defense was that they had truly believed they had been providing the "necessaries of life" when they followed Hanswille's advice. The judge acquitted them after the discovery that the prosecution had failed to provide important information supporting the couple's story. https://quackwatch.org/related/victims/atikian/ - for more information

Let's run through some other examples of ideologic vegetarian extremism:

* It caused mental and growth retardation in two boys underfed from birth to ages 3 and 5. Their mother had become a vegetarian, later eliminated sugar and dairy products from her diet, and eventually adopted a macrobiotic diet (see "Peculiar Vegetarianism" ). 4* Ten cases of nutritional rickets were reported among infants (most of whom were breast-fed) of strict-vegetarian mothers who had not sought medical counsel during pregnancy but had obtained advice from health food stores. 5* Scurvy and rickets occurred in two boys, 11/2 and 21/2 years old, whose parents were adherents of the Zen Macrobiotic diet (see Peculiar Vegetarianism below). 6* A 36-year-old former college professor attempted to become a " breatharian" one who supposedly feeds on air alone and died of malnutrition. First he became a vegetarian, then a fruitarian, then a " liquidarian" (consuming juices only), and finally, a would-be breatharian. 7* A 2-month-old boy died because his mother, following the invalid recommendation for colic in Adelle Davis's Let's Have Healthy Children, overdosed him with potassium. 8 In a television interview, the mother said that, as she became increasingly estranged toward conventional medicine, she had adopted vegetarianism and then veganism.* A 24-year-old woman who was head of San Jose State University's student art program died after taking an extract of pennyroyal to induce an abortion. She was described as "a strict vegetarian who was involved in holistic medicine." 9

For the ideologist, vegetarianism is a hygienic religion. It enables believers to practice self-denial. As a religion, vegetarianism attracts the guilt-ridden. It attracts masochists because it gives guilt a boost. And it seduces the unskeptical by causing guilt and/or by instilling false guilt. Guilt leads to self-denial, even asceticism. The belief that salvation is attainable by eschewing worldly pleasures marked the asceticism of early Christian zealots. Similarly, health neurotics with medical problems seem to believe that the more they restrict their alimentary pleasures, the more their health will improve. Fasting, austere diets, enemas, and the ingestion of bitter herbs are consistent with the psychological needs of health neurotics, many of whom shun those voices of conventional medicine and public health that might disenchant them.

Of course, I don't blame ideologic vegetarianism per se entirely for tragedies such as those outlined above. Mental or emotional disorders apparently figure in many instances. In such cases, extremism is more to blame. This doesn't take ideologic vegetarianism off the hook, however, for it can fuel or ignite psychological problems.

When an LLU medical team transplanted a baboon's heart into an infant whose pseudonym was "Baby Fae," animal-rights activists picketed the medical center. They seemed disillusioned with SDAs, who have no qualms about prioritizing humans over animals. In October 1992, after a pig's liver had been transplanted into a 30-year-old woman to enable her to survive until a human liver was secured, a representative of PCRM engaged in a televised debate with one of the physicians who had performed the transplant. The representative lamented that the pig's consent had not been obtained.

PCRM appears to be largely a personal forum for its leader, Neal Barnard, M.D., and is said to be substantially funded by PETA. (In fiscal year 1994, donations and grants to PCRM reportedly totaled more than a million dollars. 17) Barnard extols the longevity value of vegetarianism. He has claimed: "It's not genetics or fate that gives people long, healthy lives and cuts other people short; for those who want to take care of themselves, it all comes down to diet." The surgeon argued that pigs were killed daily for meat, including their livers. The PCRM doctor retorted that the consumption of animal fat (which is highly saturated) was responsible for most deaths in modern society. He cited a study conducted by Colin Campbell in China. Campbell had focused on the relative morbidity for certain diseases without pointing out that life expectancy in China (66 years) is lower that that in the United States (75 years). 18

Because they consider themselves morally superior, many vegetarians exhibit no reservations against using mind-control techniques or terrorism to actualize their agenda. Mind control includes using information selectively to "educate" people about the alleged superiority of vegetarianism. It may also include traumatizing people emotionally to condition them against the use of animal foods. Early in my teaching experience, I attended a meeting of SDA secondary school health teachers where many said that they converted students to vegetarianism by taking them on field trips to slaughterhouses to witness the bloodshed. This strategy offended me even though I was a practicing vegetarian at the time. Having studied for years how people have been manipulated by cults and quacks, it is now clear to me that the slaughterhouse tactic is a form of mind control that it is as unethical as discouraging little girls from having sex by inducing them to watch a difficult childbirth.

Terrorism involves trying to coerce people to behave in ways the perpetrators desire. In December 1994, to keep people from having turkey for Christmas dinner, self-described animal-rights terrorists claimed they had injected rat poison into supermarket turkeys in Vancouver, British Columbia. The scare caused the destruction of more than $1 million in turkeys. Apparently, the activists had not foreseen the ensuing slaughter of turkeys as replacements.

Odorless Doo-doo?

The John Harvey Kellogg character in the 1995 film Road to Wellville stated that his feces had no more odor than that of "freshly baked biscuits." One evening I offered a ride home from the university to an elderly colleague, an avid vegetarian. Upon entering my car, he declared: "When I drink carrot juice, my bowel movements have no odor."

Before I could respond, he said: "Rabbits eat lots of carrots, and their feces have no odor." The thought of someone running around sniffing little piles of rabbit doo-doo almost made me laugh, but I didn't want to be disrespectful. His idea that rabbits eat many carrots intrigued me. I had raised them in my boyhood and discovered that, despite the passion for carrots shown by Bugs Bunny, real bunnies are not particularly fond of carrots. Furthermore, wild rabbits seldom would have an opportunity to eat carrots. Luckily the ride was short.

The late Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Ernest Becker argued that defecation is most closely associated with humankind's animality and mortality. 15 During a Bible class at an SDA school, I was taught that people did not defecate in the Garden of Eden but utilized the food they ingested in its entirety. Apparently, foul odors did not befit Paradise. (Perhaps the persistence of the miasmatic theory of disease the theory that diseases are due to foul-smelling emanations from the earth well into the nineteenth century, when SDA beliefs were developed, reinforced the idea of a poopless Paradise.) I was also taught that roughage became part of the human diet after the Fall. Allegedly, this broadening of the diet to include "the herb of the field" (Genesis 3:18, King James version) occurred because humans were now under the " death sentence" caused by original sin. Whether this reportedly was a voluntary dietary change or part of the curse of being ousted from Paradise is debatable. Some versions of the Bible imply that "the herb of the field" merely meant "wild foods" (New English Version), not a new source of food.

Heavy "PETAing"

In the last century, the pacifist movement was vegetarian because of the belief that meat-eating animals were fierce and vegetarian animals were docile. The British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley claimed that the French revolution had been bloody and the English revolution bloodless because the French ate more meat than the English. 16 Such invalid notions have been discredited, but not abandoned. Some boxers still eat raw meat or drink blood before a fight to increase their aggressiveness.

People who fancy themselves morally superior often have a mission to convert humanity to their worldview. The most violent ideologic vegetarians are the animal-rights activists, who have destroyed animal research facilities and threatened researchers' lives. Animal-rights groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) consider animals on par with humans. On April 24, 1996, PETA's Ingrid Newkirk appeared on the television newsmagazine Day & Date opposing sport fishing. She began her argument by seeking commiseration for suffocating fish. Then she said that fish were unhealthful food because they contained mercury and other environmental contaminants. The solution, according to Newkirk, was vegetarianism. Her opponent, a TV talk-show host, pressed her into acknowledging the PETA creed. The talk-show host described an on-air encounter she had had with another PETA representative. A scenario had been presented in which the representative's daughter needed a vital organ from a beloved household pet in order to survive. The ethical question had been whether the child's life was worth more than the pet's. The PETA representative had held that the child had no more value than the pet. Newkirk did not contest the assertion that PETA considers the life of a child no more valuable than that of a pet.

Disclosure

Research into vegetarianism by vegetarians always involves at least unconscious bias. All humans have entrenched beliefs beliefs whose rootedness makes doing related scientific research unwise. Kenneth J. Rothman, Dr.P.H., referred to SDAs in a recent discussion of conflicts of interest in research:

We might expect conflict of interest concerns to be raised, for example, about Seventh Day Adventists who are studying the health effects of the comparatively abstemious lifestyle of their fellow Adventists. Whereas policies at [the Journal of the American Medical Association] and The New England Journal of Medicine emphasize financial conflicts, Science asks authors to divulge "any relationships that they believe could be construed as causing a conflict of interest, whether or not the individual believes that is actually so." In other words, to comply with disclosure policies at Science, authors might need to disclose to editors their religion and sexual orientation along with their financial portfolio. 19

Although Rothman argues for letting work standing on its own merit rather than judging cynically any possible connection to a funding source, his example makes the point that motivations more powerful than money can distort data. Science fraud can be extremely difficult to detect, because the perpetrators control the information. As Mark Twain observed, "Figures don't lie, but liars figure!"

I don't believe that all research done by vegetarians is untrustworthy. My experience with the ongoing Seventh-day Adventist Health Study (SDAHS), a series of studies conducted from LLU School of Public Health, has been largely positive. Its chief researcher, the late Roland Phillips, M.D., Dr.P.H., was an outstanding scientist in whose objectivity I had the utmost confidence. He recognized the problem of the influence of social expectations on SDAs responding to questions about their lifestyle. Adventist groupthink makes it likely that SDAs will underreport activities disfavored by the church community (e.g., meat-eating, coffee drinking, and imbibing) and over-report those that are approved (e.g., dining meatlessly and exercising). Phillips seemed to feel that the benefits of vegetarianism per se were limited, and that one must take account of heredity, socioeconomic status, and the total SDA lifestyle. Abstention from smoking, access to state-of-the-art healthcare, and strong social support probably are responsible for most of the health benefits SDAs enjoy. The main problem with SDA vegetarian science is how the scientific information is used. To paraphrase an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying: Among SDAs, when the news about vegetarianism and health is good, "we hear it ever" ; when the news is not good, "we hear it never."

I have received numerous reports from SDA health professionals, and have personal knowledge of other cases, in which church members' overconfidence in vegetarianism prevented them from obtaining effective medical care. Some reports have involved true believers in vegetarianism who were members of physicians' families. Some denied symptoms, and their denial kept them from seeking effective intervention in time. Others rejected medical care for "natural remedies" that emphasized diet. The attitudes evidenced are consistent with those identified in cancer patients who had turned to quackery because they believed they had brought the disease upon themselves and could cure it by "natural" practices. 20 The SDA Church has bent over backward to document the benefits of the SDA lifestyle and to persuade members to adopt vegetarian diets. I would like to see the church seek earnestly to expose the harm that its vegetarian teachings have caused its members. Alas, there's the rub with ideologic vegetarianism: Objectivity always takes a back seat to proselytism.

The data suggest that most SDAs are reasonable in their approach to vegetarianism. In the 1970s, the SDAHS revealed that only one percent were vegans. 21 This may change as vegetarianism becomes more popular in the general population. SDAs tend to be overachievers. If we regard something as "good," we strive to adopt it completely. If we consider something "bad," we avoid it completely. SDA vegetarian evangelists have become more aggressive in recent years because of the widespread belief in the SDA community that doomsday is nigh.

I recall an SDA church leader's fitting reply to the question of whether he ate meat: "I eat just enough to keep me from becoming a fanatic!"

One Less "Ism"

I gave up vegetarianism because I found that commitment thereto meant surrendering the objectivity that is essential to the personal and professional integrity of a scientist. As a health educator, I feel I have an obligation to endeavor to stick to whatever unvarnished facts scientific research uncovers. I can support pragmatic vegetarianism, but I believe that crusading vegetarian ideologues are dangerous to themselves and to society.

ACSH advisor William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., is a professor of public health and preventive medicine at Loma Linda University, founder and president of the National Council Against Health Fraud, and coeditor of The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in America (1993). This article is an adaptation of one published by Prometheus Books (Amherst, New York) in the November/December 1996 issue of Nutrition & Health Forum newsletter.

1. D. Erhardt, "The New Vegetarians, Part OneÃVegetarianism and its Medical Consequences," Nutrition Today, November/December, 1973.

2. R. Spitzer. No Need For Hunger. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1981.

3. National Academy of Sciences. Toxicants Occurring Naturally In Foods. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1973.

4. J. Wood. "Mother of Starved Children Asks Permission to Give Birth Again," San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, March 27, 1983, p. A5.

5. Journal of Nutrition Education 1981; 13:26.

6. Newsweek, September 18, 1972, p. 71.

7. "Temple Beautiful DietÃDeath for David Blume," (AP) San Bernardino Sun, October 15, 1979, p. A-3.

8. C.V. Wetli and J.H. Davis. JAMA 1978; 240:1339.

9. San Jose Mercury News, August 20, 1994.

10. O. Segerberg. Living to Be 100: 1200 Who Did and How They Did It. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982.

11. J.L. Lyon, M.R. Klauber, J.W. Gardner, and C.R. Smart, "Cancer Incidence in Mormons and Non-Mormons in Utah, 1966-70," N Engl J Med 1976; 294:129-133 (p.132).

12. J.E. Enstrom. "Cancer Mortality among Low-Risk Populations," CA A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 1979; 29:352-61.

13. C.M. Friedenreich, R.F. Brant, and E. Riboli. "Influence of Methodological Factors in a Pooled Analysis of 13 Case-Control Studies of Colorectal Cancer and Dietary Fiber," Epidemiology 1994; 5:66-79.

14. D.J. Hunter et al. "Cohort Studies of Fat Intake and the Risk of Breast CancerÃA Pooled Analysis," New Engl J Med 1996; 334:356-61.

15. E. Becker. The Denial of Death. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973.

16. J. Whorton. "Tempest in a Flesh-Pot: Development of a Physiological Rationale for Vegetarianism," Journal of the History of Medicine, April 1977, pp. 119-120.

17. Good Medicine, Spring 1995.

18. The Population Reference Bureau, Inc., Washington, D.C., 1988.

19. K. Rothman. "Conflict of Interest: The New McCarthyism in Science," JAMA 1993; 269 (21):2782-4.

20. B. Cassileth et al. "Contemporary Treatments in Cancer Medicine," Ann Intern Med 1984; 101:105-12.

21. "Researchers Release Adventist Health Study Results," Pacific Union Recorder, March 12, 1979.

(From Priorities, Vol. 9, No. 2)