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Why I Am Not a Vegetarian       Printer Format
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By Dr. William T. Jarvis
Posted: Tuesday, April 1, 1997

ARTICLES
Publication Date: April 1, 1997

Vegetarianism has taken on a "political correctness" comparable to the
respectability it had in the last century, when many social and
scientific progressives advocated it. Today, crusaders extol meatless
eating not only as healthful but also as a solution to world hunger and
as a safeguard of "Mother Earth." The Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (PCRM) aggressively attacks the use of animal
foods and has proposed its own food-groups model, which excludes all
animal products.

I disclaimed vegetarianism after many years of observance. Although the
arguments in favor of it appear compelling, I have learned to be
suspicious, and to search for hidden agendas, when I evaluate claims of
the benefits of vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is riddled with delusional
thinking from which even scientists and medical professionals are not
immune.

Don't get me wrong: I know that meatless diets can be healthful, even
desirable, for some people. For example: (a) Men with an iron-loading
gene are better off without red meat, because it contains heme iron,
which is highly absorbable and can increase their risk of heart
disease. (b) Because vegetarian diets are likely to contain less
saturated fat than nonvegetarian diets, they may be preferable for
persons with familial hypercholesterolemia. (c) Vegetables contain
phytochemicals that appear protective against colorectal cancer. (d)
Homocysteinemia (elevated plasma homocysteine) approximately doubles
the risk of coronary artery disease. Several congenital and nutritional
disorders, including deficiencies of vitamins B6 and B12 and folic
acid, can cause this condition. Since folic acid occurs mostly in
vegetables, low intakes of the vitamin are less likely among
vegetarians than among nonvegetarians. (e) Some people find that being
a vegetarian helps to control their weight. Vegetarianism tends to
facilitate weight control because it is a form of food restriction; and
in our overfed society, food restriction is a plus unless it entails a
deficit of some essential nutrient.

However, one need not eliminate meat from one's diet for any of the
foregoing reasons. Apparently, it is ample consumption of fruits and
vegetables, not the exclusion of meat, that makes vegetarianism
healthful.

Dog Day Afternoon?

The term "vegetarian" is misleading, for it is not a name for people
who favor vegetable consumption, but a code word for those who disfavor
or protest the consumption of animal foods. The neologism
anticarnivorist better characterizes the majority of those who call
themselves vegetarians. I call myself a "vegetable enthusiast," because
I strongly encourage eating lots of vegetables, including legumes,
whole grains, and fruits. I believe that these foods are desirable not
only because of their high nutrient density and low caloric density,
but also because of aesthetic and gustatory factors. Being a vegetable
enthusiast doesn't entail rejecting the use of meat or animal products.

Most people who categorize vegetarians identify at least five different
kinds, based on which types of animal food they consume:
Semivegetarians consume dairy products, eggs, fish, and chicken;
pesco-vegetarians consume dairy products, eggs, and fish;
lacto-ovo-vegetarians, dairy products and eggs; ovo-vegetarians, eggs;
and vegans, no animal foods. From a behavioral standpoint, I categorize
vegetarians as either pragmatic or ideologic. A pragmatic vegetarian is
one whose dietary behavior stems from objective health considerations
(e.g., hypercholesterolemia or obesity). Pragmatic vegetarians are
rational, rather than emotional, in their approach to making lifestyle
decisions. In contrast, vegetarianism is a "matter of principle" for
ideologic vegetarians; its appropriateness is a given.

One can spot ideologic vegetarians by their exaggerations of the
benefits of vegetarianism, their lack of skepticism, and their failure
to recognize (or their glossing over of) the potential risks even of
extreme vegetarian diets. Ideologic vegetarians make a pretense of
being scientific, but they approach the subject of vegetarianism more
like lawyers than scientists. Promoters of vegetarianism gather data
selectively and gear their arguments toward discrediting information
that is contrary to their dogma. This approach to defending a position
is suitable for a debate, but it cannot engender scientific
understanding.

Because of the influence of my Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) environment,
I practiced vegetarianism for many years. My wife and I even tried to
give up consuming all animal products, but this didn't work. We
sometimes muse aloud about the morning we put soymilk on our breakfast
cereal. We ended up eating the cereal with a fork because we found the
mixture repulsive. We had another unforgettable experience when we ate
with a group of vegetarian hippies in the Oregon woods. We were there
at their request to advise them on vegetarian eating. They had already
prepared the worst-looking vegetarian stew I have ever seen or tasted.
It consisted of raw peanuts and a variety of half-cooked vegetables.
After eating it, I had heartburn for hours. Digestive distress is
legendary among SDAs.

Reasons for adopting vegetarianism can be very personal. Some years ago
I shared a podium for several days with a vegetarian. It became clear
from our informal conversations that he was not religious; so I asked
him why he had opted for vegetarianism. He told me a touching story
about having been a lonely boy whose closest companion was his pet dog.
He said that, peering into the dog's eyes one day, he had come to see
the animal as a fellow being. Soon he had applied this view to all
animals, and since he could not bear the thought of eating his dog, he
could no longer eat other animals.

North by Northwest

Darla Erhardt, R.D., M.P.H., listed five vegetarian postulates: (1) All
forms of life are sacred, and all creatures have a right to live out
their natural lives. (2) It is anatomically clear that God did not
design humans to eat meat. (3) Slaughter is repugnant and degrading.
(4) Raising animals for meat is inefficient and misuses available land.
(5) Animal flesh is unhealthful because it contains toxins, virulent
bacteria, uric acid, impure fluids, and the wrong kinds of nutrients. 1
I find all of these axioms flawed:

1. The belief that all life is sacred can lead to absurdities such as
allowing mosquitoes to spread malaria, or vipers to run loose on one's
premises. Inherent in the idea that all life is sacred is the
supposition that all forms of life have equal value. The natural world
reveals hierarchies in the food chain, the dominance of certain species
over others. And most creatures in the wild die (usually the victim of
a predator) long before they have reached the genetic limit on their
longevity.
2. The multifarious dietary practices of human populations belie the
notion that humans are designed to be vegetarians rather than
omnivores. For example, Australian aborigines consume insect larvae and
reptiles, Eskimos eat raw meat, and traditional Hindus are vegetarians.

The first SDA physician, John Harvey Kellogg (1852®¢1943), was a
vegetarian zealot. Alonzo Baker, Ph.D., his former private secretary,
told me of an incident that occurred circa 1939: Kellogg awakened him
in the middle of the night and ordered him to board the morning train
for Cleveland. There, Weston Price, D.D.S., who had just returned from
the mysterious high north, was to give a report on Eskimo dietary
habits. When Baker returned, he informed Kellogg of Price's finding
that Eskimos ate raw meat almost exclusively (eskimo literally means
"raw meat eater"). Kellogg accused Price of lying.

Perhaps Kellogg disbelieved Price partly because it was widely known
that the 1898 Yukon gold rushers had suffered extensively from scurvy.
People generally believed that Eskimos derived their vitamin C from
berries the snow had preserved. In fact, Eskimos derive vitamin C from
the raw meat of animals who synthesize ascorbic acid. If they had
cooked their meat, they would have developed scurvy like the gold
rushers. (When I visited Northwest Territories, Canada, in 1973, a
Franciscan monk who raised beautiful vegetables in a greenhouse in
Pelly Bay told me that the Inuits, or North American Eskimos, didn't
like their taste and wouldn't eat them.)

3. Whether something is repugnant is highly individual. Some Hindus who
will not eat animal foods readily drink their own urine for the sake of
health. And what is repugnant -for example, chores such as changing a
baby's diaper or caring for sick people -is not necessarily wrong.
Whether such activities are degrading is a matter of opinion. That most
prey are eaten while they are still alive testifies to the
heartlessness of nature compared to slaughterhouses, where death is
generally quick and painless.
4. The idea that animal-raising is an inefficient way to produce food
is half-baked. Animals pull their weight when it comes to land-use and
food-production efficiency: They graze on lands unsuitable for
crop-growing, eat those portions of plants that are considered inedible
(e.g., corn stalks and husks), and provide byproducts and services that
ease human burdens. 2 Many nomadic populations survive on lands that
lack farming potential by feeding on animals whose nourishment is
coarse vegetation humans can't digest.

5. The postulate that toxins render meat unfit as food also lacks
merit. Plants also contain naturally occurring toxicants, many of which
are far more deadly than those of animal flesh. 3 Vegetarian
evangelists who revel in portraying animal foods as unhealthful
disregard the fact that those societies that consume the most animal
products enjoy record longevity. They also overlook the reality that
the animals they brand as diseased are herbivores whose diet consists
entirely of raw vegetation. These animals develop many diseases
"despite" becoming vegans after weaning.

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 ÎmigrÎs
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, Loreie'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.

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.

Eating by the Book?

SDA vegetarianism is rooted in the Bible, according to which for food
God gave humans "all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth, and
every tree bearing fruit that yields seed" (Genesis 1:29). Meat is said
to have become a part of the human diet after the Flood, when all plant
life had been destroyed: "Every creature that lives and moves shall be
food for you" (Genesis 9:3). Adventists are taught that the
introduction of meat into the human diet at that time decreased the
human life span from the more than 900 years of the first humans to
today's "three-score and ten."

However, the Bible warns against confusing dietary practices with moral
behavior:

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and
peace. (Romans 14:17)

Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink.
(Colossians 2:16)

One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only
vegetables, let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not
him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats. (Romans 14:2-4)

It also seems to condemn vegetarianism:

The Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some in the
church will turn away from Christ and become eager followers of
teachers with devil inspired ideas. These teachers will tell lies with
straight faces and do it so often that their consciences won't even
bother them. They will say that it is wrong to be married and wrong to
eat meat, even though God gave these things to well-taught Christians
to enjoy and be thankful for. For everything God made is good, and we
may eat it gladly if we are thankful for it. ( I Timothy 4:1-4, Living
Bible)

SDA Church pioneer Ellen G. White (1827®¢1915) was a proponent of
vegetarianism even though she did not practice it herself. Like the
Grahamites of her time, she taught that gradually the earth would
become more corrupted, diseases and calamities worse, and the food
-particularly animal foods -unsafe. In 1902 she wrote that the time
might come when the use of milk should be discontinued. Although White
was an advocate of science and chiefly responsible for making SDA
healthcare a science-based enterprise, clearly she did not anticipate
twentieth-century advances in public health and medical science.
Despite the record longevity now enjoyed by people in the developed
nations, vegetarian zealots within the church caught up in the doomsday
hysteria of the 1990s have decided that the time has come to give up
all animal foods and are fervidly preaching veganism.

East of Eden

It is possible to provide all essential nutrients except vitamin B12
without using animal foods. On the other hand, it is possible to
provide all essential nutrients with a diet composed only of meat.
Personal dietary appropriateness -including the value of a diet as a
source of essential nutrients and its value as a preventative -for
oneself and one's significant others is the foremost dietary
consideration of pragmatic vegetarians. In contrast, the overriding
dietary consideration of ideologic vegetarians varies with the
particular ideology. Typically, their motivation is a blend of
physical, psychosocial, societal, and moral, often religious, concerns.

A continual problem for SDAs who espouse the "back to Eden" ideology is
the absence of a non-animal food source of vitamin B12. A vegetarian
Registered Dietitian who wrote a column for a church periodical asked
me if I thought vegans could derive vitamin B12 from organic vegetables
that were unwashed before ingestion. I opined that it would be better
to eat animal foods than fecal residues. She agreed.

A perennial assumption among vegetarians is that vegetarianism
increases longevity. In the last century, Grahamites -devotees of the
Christian "hygienic" philosophy of Sylvester Graham (1794-1851)
-taught that adherence to the Garden of Eden lifestyle would
eventuate in humankind's reclamation of the potential for
superlongevity, such as that attributed to Adam (930 years) or
Methuselah (969 years). I discussed this matter 25 years ago with an
SDA physician who was dean of the Loma Linda University (LLU) School of
Health. Although he admitted that lifelong SDA vegetarians had not
exhibited spectacular longevity, he professed that longevity of the
antediluvian sort might become possible over several generations of
vegetarianism. SDA periodicals publicize centenarians and often
attribute their longevity to the SDA lifestyle. However, of 1200 people
who reached the century mark between 1932 and 1952, only four were
vegetarians. 10 I continue to ask: Where on Earth is there an
exceptionally longevous population of vegetarians? Hindus have
practiced vegetarianism for many generations but have not set longevity
records. At best, the whole of scientific data from nutrition-related
research supports vegetarianism only tentatively. The incidence of
colorectal cancer among nonvegetarian Mormons is lower than that of
SDAs. 11 A review of populations at low risk for cancer showed that
World War I veterans who never smoked had the lowest risk of all. 12 As
data accumulate, optimism that diet is a significant factor in cancer
appears to be diminishing. An analysis of 13 case-control studies of
colorectal cancer and dietary fiber showed that, for the studies with
the best research methods, risk estimates for dietary fiber and
colorectal cancer were closer to zero.13 A pooled analysis of studies
of fat intake and the risk of breast cancer that included SDA data
showed no association. 14

A meatless diet can facilitate weight control because it is a form of
food restriction. But one need not eliminate meat to maintain a healthy
weight, and there are many overweight vegetarians. Surely prudence and
selectivity overshadow mere abstention from consuming animal products.

Daniel's Diet

According to the first chapter of the Book of Daniel, Israel's captive
whiz kids -" well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning in
all knowledge, and understanding science" (verse 4) -after subsisting
on just vegetables and water for ten days, impressed the Babylonian
king as far superior to all the magicians and astrologers " in all
matters of wisdom and understanding" (verse 20). Many ideological
vegetarians credit vegetables for group's physical and mental
improvement (see "A 'Biblical' Alternativist Method"). A more credible
proposition is that abstention from drinking wine caused the
improvement, which the story ascribes to God.

In an interview on the school's Christian radio station in the
mid-1970s, an LLU nutrition graduate student (who was not an SDA)
claimed that vegetarianism produced superior intellects. To make her
case, she stated:

Linus Pauling says that vitamin C improves intelligence. Vegetarians
get more vitamin C in their diets than meat-eaters. The probable reason
why George Bernard Shaw and Leo Tolstoy were brilliant was because they
were vegetarians.

The interviewer agreed, extolling the health and intellect of
vegetarians. That Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian went unmentioned during
the interview. Also unmentioned was that Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and
other eminent moralists were not vegetarians.

Animal behavioral scientists have noted that, to survive, meat-eating
predators must outsmart their vegetarian prey. However, I believe that
all such theories break down because of the difficulty of defining
intelligence.

SDAs note that meat-eating predators such as wolves and lions have
tremendous speed but lack endurance. However, Arctic sled dogs that run
the 1200-mile Ididarod cover more than a hundred miles per day -a
feat no horse, mule or ox can accomplish.

The idea that vegetarians have superior physical endurance was
reinforced in 1974 when a group of male vegetarian runners called "the
vegetarian seven" set a 24-hour distance record. This inspired an
undergraduate dietetics major to seek me out as a coach for a group of
seven female vegetarian long-distance runners. I asked her what their
motivations were -something every coach needs to know. She said they
wanted to demonstrate the superiority of a vegetarian diet. I asked who
would be representing the meat-eaters. She said that, because the event
would not be a standard competition, no one would represent the
meat-eaters. I revealed to her that three of the male runners had not
been vegetarians until training for the record-setting event but merely
had pledged to become so. I also told her: that genetic factors,
principally the capacity for oxygen uptake, determine distance-running
ability; that whether a diet is vegetarian is inconsequential to
distance-running ability; and that a 24-hour run is a perilous way to
try proving vegetarian superiority. "What will you do," I inquired, "
if seven meat-eating, beer-drinking atheists who are world-class
runners decide to beat your record?" She got the point. And although
she became an accomplished amateur runner, she didn't use her success
to propagandize for vegetarianism.

John Harvey Kellogg sought to prove that vegetarians were physically
superior by fielding a Battle Creek College football team, which he
personally coached. According to a former player, "Brother" Wright,
whenever Kellogg's players lost, he railed at them for cheating on
their diets and held them captive until one would say he had broken
training rules and eaten meat. Wright stated that sometimes a player
would eventually lie that he had eaten meat just to get the team
released. He described Kellogg's efforts as "a crusade to prove the
superiority of vegetarianism." Ellen G. White's condemnation of this
approach to proving SDA superiority led to a policy restricting
interscholastic sports by Adventist schools.

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.

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.

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.

***

TC