The problem I have with vegans is that they are purists, and while D&D purists who believe in unlimited D6 for maximum fireball damage (trying to think of the most trivial thing one can be pure about) are normally harmless, the rest don't look very different standing next to fundamentalists. Sure, you're looking out for your health and the health of the entire animal kingdom but we did not evolve into humans from soy alone. Exercise a little balance, for Pete's sake, as Regi from Sao Paulo says. And what is wrong with staying with vegetarianism (which I have no problem with)? Why make the leap to veganism? Does it make you feel more pure? There you go.

Jennifer Tan, Seattle, WA

Mammals drink their mother's milk. I don't care what the adult female decides to eat, usually the milk will have the nutritional value that her infant requires. Surely, this particular couple was well-intentioned in their initial zest for vegan feeding but didn't consider what their infant needed compared to how successfully they (as adults ) could so easily get caloric value out of a vegan diet (nuts and seeds have tons of the good kind of fats, which obviously doesn't help an infant).... Dear God! Save Your people from ignorance. Breasts are for feeding babies. When will we learn?

Paulie Girl, Washington, DC, the last colony

To Nick Byram, Sacramento, California.
I agree on the fact that what those parents did was completely unjustifiably wrong; however, just because we were given incisors and cuspids doesnt mean we were meant to eat meat. We were given hands and opposable thumbs, does that mean we should kill people because we have the ability too? Meat is murder, and I don't know if you are a religious person, but if you are the Bible clearly states in Genesis 1:29-30 we were originally intended to eat only of plants.
Open your mind a little.

Taylor Geyer, Lancaster, California

The vegan diet has consistently shown health benefits compared to omnivores. Most vegans are knowledgable about health and nutrition. Obviously these people weren't.

Veganism is explicitly a moral choice. Those who adopt it for health are not technically vegan but may be said to eat a vegan diet.

Vegans oppose suffering. They watched their child waste away. They aren't vegans. They are misled and have skewed priorities.

Kaziglu Bey, England,

A vegan diet is good for children? Well what's it like for adults? Saying something like that is like saying "bullets only kill humans over 18 years of age".

I can't believe how out of control veganism has gotten lately. Sure, us people who eat meat end up making our children sick with our food, but at least were trying to provide health. When you have a vegan diet planned for a child you must have in mind what the child will be missing. When one is older they can take supplement pills, so naturally one may not think a vegan diet would be so bad. But the child is not only not able to take pills, but is missing the proper nutrients from a mother's milk.

This idea was completely stupid. Those parent's don't deserve to go to prison because they killed their child, but because they're also vegans.

LAWLZ! :)

Aaron Aguilera, North Port, Florida

Why didn't they breastfeed their baby? There's always the chance that the vegan woman wasn't getting enough protein and other nutrition to sustain breast milk. Above all, there is NO excuse to not go to the hospital after a certain point.

And to you Vegan militants--get a life, your diet is a mental illness. We did evolve incisor and cuspid teeth for a reason. I always thought the militant vegans wanted us to eat like we lived in Pol Pot's Cambodia so they could impose that kind of system upon us. Well, this poor little fellow got the Pol Pot diet plan.

Nick Byram, Sacramento, CA, USA

It's totally irrelevant what diet the parents follow when a baby dies in their care, especially when the death would have been avoidable. I'm a vegan mom myself, my children aged 3, 5 and 9 are lifelong vegans and are in perfect health, tall, and score above average intelligence. Why on earth did they not breastfeed the child or only inadequately so? Mothers milk, of course is vegan. And even if, for some absurd reason the couple believed that mothers milk wasn't vegan, there would have been completely adequate formular instead of supermarket soy milk.

So it was definitely wrong to merely "supplement" with breast milk, this in my eyes however does not justify a conviction of murder, since the parents did not deliberately try to kill their baby. Killers don't carry a secretly conceived dead baby to a hospital... This case is absurd, and the emphasis of the media on the "vegan" factor tells its own story.

If the parents did intentionally hurt the baby, they wouldn't be vegans...

Anna Schwerdtfeger, Berlin, Germany

You're right; this has nothing to do with veganism. Funny how when meat-eating parents starve their children and foster charges the headlines never mention tehier diets. Breast milk is the perfect food for infants except in rare cases such as insufficiency or milk-transferable diseases such as AIDS; fully nutritious soy formula is available for such situations. Neither soy milk nor cow's milk is adequate; cow's milk should never be given to infants younger than 12 months; it's been linked to a number of diseases in later life such as diabetes mellitus and contains no significant iron. In actuality, a normal vegan diet is highly beneficial for children, superior in many ways to a diet of foods of animal origin.

John Mayer, Knoxville, TN

I'm not a vegan, but I don't think there's anything in veganism that prevents breast milk as the main diet rather than a way to spuplement soy milk and apple juice.

J McBomb, Oakland, CA

Sadly a 6 week old enfant who starved to death didn't have the strength to scream and holler near long enough.

An adult who has the capacity to maintain her own health on a vegan diet, should have been able to acquire enough information via the internet or through printed materials to sustain the health of a newborn. I would not have been able
to show this couple any more compassion than they gave their own baby.

Human breast milk provides a perfectly balanced diet to nourish an enfant, that lacking, processed enfant formula,
soy included, would have sufficed. This couple, chose to feed their baby from a container labeled against such use.
In doing so they are accepting responsibilty for the outcome.

Catia A, AZ, USA

Being vegan has nothing to do with this, except that they are using it as an excuse. If they were truly feeding the baby breast milk as they claimed, it would have surely survived. Breastmilk has worked exceptionally well for our species for the last several thousand years.
I find it hard to believe this wasn't intentional. Even if they viewed the hospital as being infested with germs, they could have at least called a doctor or had a nurse come to their home. It is inconceivable that someone with a baby weighing 3.5 pounds could not realize something was SERIOUSLY wrong with their child.

E. Smith, Chandler, Arizona/United States

As a vegetarian who is mostly vegan, I'm embarrassed that this defense was used and glad the prosecutors and jury didn't buy it. Just because you're vegan doesn't mean you can't nourish your child and take him to the doctor when he is sick.

Jeff Smith, Westminster, Colorado

I have been a vegetarian (not vegan as I eat dairy products) for 30 years so I feel sympathetic to the couple who tried to introduce their child to their way of life, but did not have sufficient knowledge to be able to maintain their child in good health.

Its tragic, its desperately sad. But one question to those that feed meat, processed foods, and foods heavily laced with artifical colourings - should you be prosecuted if it can be shown that your child died of cancer or related illness brought about by the food you fed it?

Meenakshi, Tiruvannamalai, India

Shocking to say the least.
Going to extremes can always be dangerous. If only people found balance, balance in their lives as a whole.
Poor baby.

Regi, São Paulo,