I’m not a vegan, but some of my best friends practice this way of eating. They avoid all animal products. It usually starts out as something of an ethical concern for animals, then broadens into a worry about the effect of animal agriculture on the planet, and then they start to investigate whether the consumption of animal products is even healthy for human beings.
I can’t really say my concern for animals is as strong as the majority of vegans. But when they talk to me about the enormous toll that animal agriculture takes on the Earth, and some recent scientific findings about the health benefits of a plant-based diet, it makes me think. In my time I have loved my steaks, my Chicken McNuggets, and my beef jerky, but I really won’t be surprised if I one day end up as a vegan.
I like the idea of living a healthy life on a healthy planet. Being good to animals is just a bonus.
It’s with the idea that the anti-vaccine forces need to consider those alliances which will move the health of our common humanity forward. I’ve always wondered why we don’t have a greater vegan presence in our movement.
I take one of my good friends as an example of somebody who should be a natural ally to our cause. She is vegan, is an athlete, is concerned about social justice issues, and thinks that movies like the documentary Food, Inc., about the conditions in which agricultural animals are raised should be required viewing for everybody on the planet.
And yet, she is an enormous supporter of vaccines, and is another one of those people who has asked me not to talk about this issue with her.
IF, I could talk to her, here’s what I would say.
“Do you realize how a typical vaccines is created? They isolate a virus from a human being, then passage it multiple times through animal tissue (usually mice, rats, monkeys, or pigs), then test it on living animals who are subsequently sacrificed, before reinjecting it into human beings. Do you realize that by getting a vaccine you are putting animal tissue inside your body? To say nothing of those vaccines which use aborted human fetal tissue, and the host of chemicals that you would never accept being on your vegan food.”
I guess you could call that my elevator pitch, that thing I’d say in a minute or two to somebody I met on an elevator. Is that succinct enough? I don’t want to overwhelm them with facts, like how their rights have been taken away by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, the presence in Washington of at least three lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry for every member of Congress, or the recent revelations of senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. William Thompson.
The wider view?…
The passion of most vegans I have met for animal rights is quite impressive. What I have also enjoyed about them is that although they start with a moral concern, the vegans I know have widened their gaze to look at the effect of animal agriculture on our environment, as well as the effect animal products have on our health.
I believe this open-minded approach serves them well, and is likely to gain them many new adherents. I would like to add a new question to their search for knowledge.
Knowing that vaccines are created with animal products, and require the injection of animal products into the human body; How Can a Vegan EVER Get a Vaccine?
Your view of becoming a vegan because of the “toll” animals take on the earth is misplaced. If you listen to your vegan friends it is almost a guarantee you’ll soon be one. Everything they preach sounds great until you realize your body needs good fats which can only come from animals. Good quality butter, cheese, etc., are just some of the things we can get nowhere but from the raw milk of a pastured cow.
Here’s two terrific articles (and a superb vid to watch in one of the articles) which make the point very well about how important animals are to the earth’s natural cycle of life.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/30/grazing-livestock.aspx
http://www.tendergrassfedmeat.com/2012/08/28/why-grassfed-meat-is-good-for-the-planet/
People truly need a total re-education on this subject. It’s amazing what people DON’T know.
Hi Kent,
someday we’ll get around to talking to each other as well.
Your diet can create learning difficulties. The cause is too much protein which gathers on the heart and, thereby, creates difficulties in grasping or even accepting new concepts.
This should, however, not be true of vegans who, as a rule, do not overdose on protein. Many others do and I have even heard doctors of medicine recommending that the diet should be one third protein – a certain recipe for a heart attack!
Of course, as nutrition is, mostly, not even mention in medical training and the little they learn afterwards tends to come from things like “The McDonald’s Institute of Nutrition” and other lobby groups for unhealthy eating styles such ignorance is to be expected.
What does tend to happen with vegans (and, sometimes, with macrobiotens as well) is a certain fanaticism. “Vegan/macrobiotics/5 element/whatever is the absolute solution to all health issues and nothing else need be considered.”
This inculcates a resistance to learning anything at all from someone who is not vegan etc. – “If you’re not vegan, you can’t possibly know anything about health.” That’s the problem!
Do you know how to lead a pig? You keep tapping it on the nose with a stick and it will follow the stick. That’s how you’re going to lead your friend to vaccine knowledge.
“You’re not strong enough for the newest vaccines.”
“I don’t want to talk with you about vaccines because I know you can’t take them.”
Etc.
Get on her number and she’ll demand that you tell her everything……… But don’t!
Tell her to research it herself and give her just a few (a VERY FEW) pointers on where to look.
Preaching to the converted is good business but doesn’t get you new converts!
Blessed be
Karma Singh
I am a vegan…and I am a vegan, who became vegan BECAUSE of being allergic to ALL ANIMAL PRODUCTS..yes..I get all my nutrition from plants..and this raw plant and fruit and nut diet is what saved my life…I have lupus..which I was diagnosed with after I had a flu shot that I reacted badly to…I had a CNS meltdown, if you will, my body shook, my hands shook, I had difficulty walking, but did recover after about 2 weeks and then suddenly around 6-8 months later I have lupus…is there a connection? Don’t know..But what I do know.., is that slowly but surely since then my body became intolerant to meats and broths from animals of all kinds until now dairy and eggs, and NOW anaphylaxis from animal products…YES, wheezing, hives, swollen tongue..so NO I can NEVER be vaccinated, it would kill me…but here is the interesting factoid about my mostly raw vegan diet..My lupus is in remission…Yup…figure that one out..I went from 15 prescription drugs a day to ZERO…in the course of 2 years from when I had made the final jump into veganism…Much you see, not of my choice…and the doctors cannot figure out why I go into anaphylaxis..is it the protein or sugar chains in animal products..is it the cortisol..we just don’t know, but it’s real, because if a person slips animal products in my food and doesn’t tell me, I will be covered in hives and be wheezing and then I hear the all too familiar..OH I THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST ONE OF THOSE TREE HUGGIN VEGAN..MY BAD? SORRY..all the while I am choking down benedryl, trying to decide if this is epipen worthy..You see..I think there is a growing number of people out there allergic to animal products and they don’t realize it..and that could be why some adults and children have toxic and deadly reactions to vaccination…who knows..But..I have since become a tree hugger..yup, can’t avoid it..love animals and I have since, after studied vaccination, and being involved with vaccination as an RN for over 26yrs..I am not provaccine anymore,…in fact quite the opposite..I see that very little information is passed to the recipients prior to signing the legal binding consent form that allows the givers to give the vaccine and then absolves the makers and givers of wrong doing, should the recipient be harmed…Kind of telling isn’t if you have to sign this document…I have read the package inserts on these vaccines…all the science or projected science, and ingredients and so on and side effects which are DEADLY many of the time..NOT right away, but years down the road..and we stack these things in great numbers in not yet mature systems..I won’t debate on this…I saw that when I discovered the danger and wanted to share this package insert with my families before they sign their life away…I was not a popular person with my employers and I was counseled on bringing up things that JUST DON’T HAPPEN MUCH..even tho all of it is listed there in the insert..and also..My own experience in dealing with a vaccine injury…and watching it happen to babies..it really opens the eyes here.. BUt to get back on track…If veganism became the norm to save our dying planet and I sure wish it was…vaccination would be a thing of the past…a dark sad past. One I wish we could just leave in the dust..
Thanks for sharing Carolyn,
you make a very, very important point here which, in part, sounds the death knell for the pharmaceutical industry.
Lupus and other so-called “Auto-immune diseases” (such a thing is literally impossible) are not biochemical but informational problems. Hashimoto, for example, I can usually completely dissolve in 2 to 6 weeks by correcting the pancreas’ information structure. It is the expectation of rejection which leads to the Hashimoto symptom.
I believe that I am correct when I state that only meat eaters get Lupus. It is the death expectation which permeates the flesh with toxic information. Anyone who doesn’t think this is real should visit an abattoir and just look at the animals waiting to be killed. Once you stop adding this informational toxin and, maybe, take up something very life affirming such as hatha yoga or chi quong, then your body will eliminate the toxic information and return to normal.
Although not totally vegan (I have been known to eat a fried egg or two) Macrobiotics, which I have been practicing for more than 30 years, comes very close to it. I haven’t had any need to visit a doctor since sometime in the early 1980’s. I have also none of the typical degeneration problem expected at my age.
As Prof Bruce Lipton makes clear in this Interview I did with him, almost all illness is informational and not biochemical in origin and can best be healed with informational medicine such as homeopathy.
http://www.karmasingh.tv/web/en/karmasingh-interviews.html
(fourth video from top).
Blessed be
Karma Singh
Excellent article! Yes – as a vegan for 40 years now I have been blessed enormously by avoiding not only all animal-based foods & products, but also eat only organic and haven’t been to a pharmacy for over 40 years and have basically stayed completely out of the medical system and now in my late 60s and in robust health, and would never take a vaccine because, as you say, they are not only filled with toxic adjuvants, heavy metals, etc., but also toxic animal tissues. How could anyone self-identifying as vegan allow themselves to be vaccinated? You’re absolutely right, sir; the anti-vax movement should be bursting with vegans, and will be as they begin to awaken from the cultural trance imposed by Big Pharma and the mainstream media.
Very well said. It is the oddest thing. I have been vegan for many years and felt at home in this community until it drifted into the woke culture and fell hook line and sinker for the mainstream narrative on just about everything. Vegans generally have become really quite obnoxious and self righteous and can be found fully endorsing the Big Pharma narrative on drug medicine and vaccines in particular, no matter what horrors are revealed. Vaccines couldn’t be less animal friendly from the disgusting growth mediums through the ingredients the vivisection and then the testing of these dangerous disease causing products on both animals and humans.