Dr. Michael Klaper: Vegan Physician and Author

Dr. Michael Klaper has been a physician for 37 years and a vegan since he was 34 years of age. He was my recent guest on Voices from the North in another interview I recorded at Shangri La, an amazing place here in New Zealand's Far North.

Dr. Klaper has had great success treating various maladies using a nutritional approach. In our talk he speaks of the amazingly quick response certain ailments have when patients switch to a plant-based diet. Lasting relief of symptoms for rheumatoid arthritis and asthma begins, in some cases, after only a few days on a new diet. Back in the 1980s, Dr. Klaper recorded a series of instructional tapes outlining how a vegan diet could help those suffering from obesity, cancer, diabetes and more.

Michael sees the expression ‘arrogant physician' as an oxymoron. He says the moment a physician stops listening and becomes arrogant is the moment he/she stops being a physician. From his perspective it is a great privilege to be a doctor and it is important to listen deeply to patients and to admit that the doctor doesn't always get it right.

Part of Dr. Klaper's training included tutelage under esteemed Chicago paediatrician, Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn, author of How to Raise a Healthy Child...In Spite of Your Doctor and more inspiring books. Robert Mendelsohn was a courageous modern pioneer who advocated home births and discouraged the overuse of vaccinations and medicines.

Dr. Klaper is unable to separate his being a vegan from being a doctor. As he says, "Being vegan is doing actions where no one gets hurt." That seems to tie in nicely with Hippocrates' edict: Physician Do No Harm. Dr. Klaper goes so far as to say that all physicians should be vegans.

In our hour long interview we cover a broad spectrum of issues including Dr. Klaper's take on some possible benefits that can arise out of the ashes of our current global financial woes. This eloquent man has worked tirelessly for decades in support of the creation of a gentler, more compassionate world. He compares the resistance people have to adopting a plant-based diet today to the resistance our forefathers had to slavery one-and-half centuries ago. He paraphrases the words of a friend of his Keith Akers (author of A Vegetarian Sourcebook: The Nutrition, Ecology and Ethics of a Natural Foods Diet and The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity),

‘The world will become vegetarian, one way or another."

For the complete interview go here:

http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24518305-Dr-Michael-Klaper-Vegan-Physician

For a nine minute excerpt follow this link:

http://www.odeo.com/episodes/24518304-Dr-Michael-Klaper-9-Minute-Excerpt

Here's a link to some of Dr. Klaper's books, The Cookbook for People Who Love Animals, Vegan Nutrition: Pure and Simple and Pregnancy, Children and the Vegan Diet:

http://www.amazon.com/Cookbook-People-Who-Love-Animals/dp/0929274180/ref=sr_1_2/180-7580018-1856412?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241038009&sr=1-2