Erm, hardly shocking. It has been established since at least the 80s that vitamin B12 is essential for brain development, and any number of large scale developmental studies have been carried out to that effect.There are no non-animal sources for vitamin B12. If you find any doctor of medicine who will recommend a vegan or vegetarian diet to either a breast feeding mother or to a child, then they ought to be struck off.

Simply Googling for "vitamin B12 brain development" will return you any number of papers on the subject, but most of them are behind their respective journal's paywalls unfortunately. However, the fact their abstracts include works like "cerebral atrophy" might give you some idea of their content.

Unless you are a strict vegetarian (vegan), you can obtain B12 from eggs or dairy products. Most vegans are well aware of the danger of B12 deficiency, and either take supplements or eat foods fortified with B12. B12 supplements are inexpensive and widely available. So how exactly is B12 a serious problem for vegetarians?

There's also Marmite, which, according to wikipedia, is suitable for vegans (I'm a meat-eater though, so I have no idea really). I grew up eating practically nothing but Marmite sandwiches - it's awesome stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite

> vitamin B12

Cobalamin is added to any number of foods (usually in the form of cyanocobalamin), including bread, cereal, orange juice, soy milk, veggie burgers, soft drinks, and on and on. It is produced by bacteria.

I know multiple mothers who have breastfed while on vegan diets. It is trivial to get B-12, simply by taking a multivitamin, which they should do anyway regardless of diet (starting with prenatal preparation including folic acid supplementation).

I would suggest doing more research on the subject of veganism and discontinuation of spreading further misinformation.