Article cut and pasted from amnesty international
Gambia: Hundreds accused of witchcraft and poisoned in government campaign
Posted: 18 March 2009
Amnesty International today revealed that up to 1,000 people in Gambia have been kidnapped from their villages by 'witch doctors', taken to secret detention centres and forced to drink hallucinogenic concoctions. Some have developed kidney problems and two have died after these attacks. Reports suggest that officials within Gambia including the police, army and the President's personal protection guards are accompanying 'witch doctors' as they carry out their campaign. Victims and their relatives told Amnesty International that 'witch doctors' have visited villages with armed security and forcibly taken people they accused of being 'witches' to secret detention centres. Many of those taken were elderly. At the secret detention centres, where some have been held for up to five days, they are forced to drink unknown substances that cause them to hallucinate and behave erratically. Many are then forced to confess to being a witch. In some cases, they are also severely beaten, almost to the point of death. Amnesty International UK Director Kate Allen said: 'These horrific attacks and kidnappings are part of a witch-hunting campaign that's spreading terror throughout the country. Already hundreds of Gambians have fled to neighbouring Senegal for safety after their villages were attacked.' Eyewitnesses and victims told Amnesty International that the 'witch doctors', who they say are from neighbouring Guinea, are accompanied by police, army and national intelligence agents. They are also accompanied by "green boys" - Gambian President Yahya Jammeh's personal protection guards. The most recent incident took place on 9 March in Sintet village in the Foni Jarrol district, where up to 300 people were forced to go to the President's farm in Kanilai. According to one eyewitness: 'At 5:00 am the paramilitary police armed with guns and shovels surrounded our village and threatened the villagers that anyone who tries to escape will be buried six feet under...Fear gripped the village...children were crying and traumatised. They randomly identified over 300 men and women who were forced at gunpoint into waiting buses and ferried to the President's hometown. Once there, they were stripped and forced to drink dirty water from herbs and were also bathed with these dirty herbs. A lot of these people who were forced to drink these poisonous herbs developed instant diarrhoea and vomiting whilst they lay helpless. I stayed there for five days. I experienced and witnessed such abuse and humiliation. I cannot believe that this type of treatment is taking place in Gambia. It is from the dark ages.' The incidents have taken place in the Foni Kansala district, an area near to President Jammeh's farm of Kanilai.
However, many people are telling Amnesty International that the 'witch hunting' campaign will spread throughout the rest of the country. Witch doctors were invited to Gambia early in 2009, soon after the death of President Jammeh's aunt. The President reportedly believes that witchcraft was used in her death.
Kate Allen continued: 'The Gambian government has to put a stop to this campaign, investigate these attacks immediately and bring those responsible to justice.'
On 8 March, Halifa Sallah, a prominent opposition figure who has written for the main opposition newspaper, Foroyya, about the activities of the witch doctors, was arrested at his home. He has since been charged with sedition and spying, and is currently in Mile II, the Central Prison in the Gambia. His next court date is set for Wednesday 25 March. Amnesty International is concerned that he is at risk of being tortured or ill-treated and that his trial will be unfair.
Friday, 20 March 2009
The heartbreak
Women are dying in childbirth in the same numbers as they were decades ago. The slow progress is an outrage, argues Chris Brazier.
Habibu is lying on matting on the mud floor of her hut. The contractions are coming thick and fast now. The pain is intense, but she draws comfort from the memory that, the previous three times, this agony gave way to the peaceful, exhausted bliss of holding her baby in her arms.
Her husband’s mother is on hand to help – she has, after all, given birth many times herself and seen many more children born. Water has been brought from the pump and sits in two large bowls ready to be used – one to wash the baby and the other to wash everything and everyone else; pieces of old cloth have been gathered over the months before so as to soak up any blood and bodily fluid. A kerosene lamp has been borrowed from a neighbour to cast any light needed on this dark West African night.
The delivery itself seems to go well: a girl, Mama says, now to be heard crying. Habibu lies back and gives herself up to the pleasure of there no longer being any sharp pain, only exhaustion and discomfort, and to the satisfaction of having brought another life into the world.
It is a while before Mama realizes that blood is still pumping out of Habibu, forming a widening crimson pool on the mat and the floor. She uses the rags to try to staunch the flow; to no avail. There is no sign of the placenta being delivered, as would normally happen within minutes of birth. Mama waits in hope for further precious minutes before realizing that the blood flow is not going to stop and that there is serious danger. Alarmed now, she summons her son, who sets out on his bicycle to try to contact the nurse at the government clinic 12 kilometres away.
By the time the nurse arrives, two hours have passed and it is too late for Habibu, whose life has drained away with her blood. There is nothing the nurse can do for the woman. Instead she tends to the newborn baby, while cursing under her breath the fees she has to charge for attending a birth at the clinic – fees that mean so many women opt to go it alone. She knows she could easily have saved her – an injection of oxytocin, perhaps, or a manual delivery of the placenta – but knows just as clearly that this desperate experience will be repeated on many other nights and days over the months and years to come.
The specifics of this story are fictional, though I name its victim Habibu in honour of a woman I knew in a Burkina Faso village who died in childbirth. She had just remarried after years of hardship raising children as a widow and had been looking forward to cementing her new marriage with a baby. She could and should have attended the nearest health centre for antenatal checks and for her delivery – the last time I visited it, the maternity unit at that health centre had yet to lose a mother during childbirth. But she opted not to do so – in part because her previous children had been safely delivered at home, but also because such supervision costs money, and even the smallest sums are hard to find in a subsistence farming family.
Just one story – but one that is repeated an average of 1,500 times every day around the world, and with particular terrible regularity in Africa and South Asia. In other cases, the complication might be not postpartum haemorrhage but an obstructed labour that demands, but does not receive, a caesarean section. In many such instances the baby will die along with the mother; in others, the mother will survive but will have lost her child. And for every one woman that dies, another 20 suffer injury, infection or disability that can even leave them shunned by their family and community.
In the vast majority of these cases, the deaths are eminently preventable. While the number of child deaths worldwide has consistently fallen – from around 13 million in 1990 to 9.7 million in 2006 – the maternal mortality toll has remained stubbornly similar. For decades, the international estimate of the number of maternal deaths each year has hovered just over the half-million mark.
You might assume from this that maternal deaths are somehow mysterious, untouchable by medical science or development interventions. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Not only could the number of maternal deaths be radically reduced, but it could also be done within a few years if only there were sufficient will.
This was one reason why, when the Millennium Development Goals were set in 2000, arguably the most ambitious of all the targets set was in relation to maternal mortality. Whereas the target was to cut poverty in half and to cut child mortality by two-thirds, the aspiration was to slash the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters. The chart overleaf shows just how far the world is falling short.
Women are dying in childbirth in the same numbers as they were decades ago. The slow progress is an outrage, argues Chris Brazier.
Habibu is lying on matting on the mud floor of her hut. The contractions are coming thick and fast now. The pain is intense, but she draws comfort from the memory that, the previous three times, this agony gave way to the peaceful, exhausted bliss of holding her baby in her arms.
Her husband’s mother is on hand to help – she has, after all, given birth many times herself and seen many more children born. Water has been brought from the pump and sits in two large bowls ready to be used – one to wash the baby and the other to wash everything and everyone else; pieces of old cloth have been gathered over the months before so as to soak up any blood and bodily fluid. A kerosene lamp has been borrowed from a neighbour to cast any light needed on this dark West African night.
The delivery itself seems to go well: a girl, Mama says, now to be heard crying. Habibu lies back and gives herself up to the pleasure of there no longer being any sharp pain, only exhaustion and discomfort, and to the satisfaction of having brought another life into the world.
It is a while before Mama realizes that blood is still pumping out of Habibu, forming a widening crimson pool on the mat and the floor. She uses the rags to try to staunch the flow; to no avail. There is no sign of the placenta being delivered, as would normally happen within minutes of birth. Mama waits in hope for further precious minutes before realizing that the blood flow is not going to stop and that there is serious danger. Alarmed now, she summons her son, who sets out on his bicycle to try to contact the nurse at the government clinic 12 kilometres away.
By the time the nurse arrives, two hours have passed and it is too late for Habibu, whose life has drained away with her blood. There is nothing the nurse can do for the woman. Instead she tends to the newborn baby, while cursing under her breath the fees she has to charge for attending a birth at the clinic – fees that mean so many women opt to go it alone. She knows she could easily have saved her – an injection of oxytocin, perhaps, or a manual delivery of the placenta – but knows just as clearly that this desperate experience will be repeated on many other nights and days over the months and years to come.
The specifics of this story are fictional, though I name its victim Habibu in honour of a woman I knew in a Burkina Faso village who died in childbirth. She had just remarried after years of hardship raising children as a widow and had been looking forward to cementing her new marriage with a baby. She could and should have attended the nearest health centre for antenatal checks and for her delivery – the last time I visited it, the maternity unit at that health centre had yet to lose a mother during childbirth. But she opted not to do so – in part because her previous children had been safely delivered at home, but also because such supervision costs money, and even the smallest sums are hard to find in a subsistence farming family.
Just one story – but one that is repeated an average of 1,500 times every day around the world, and with particular terrible regularity in Africa and South Asia. In other cases, the complication might be not postpartum haemorrhage but an obstructed labour that demands, but does not receive, a caesarean section. In many such instances the baby will die along with the mother; in others, the mother will survive but will have lost her child. And for every one woman that dies, another 20 suffer injury, infection or disability that can even leave them shunned by their family and community.
In the vast majority of these cases, the deaths are eminently preventable. While the number of child deaths worldwide has consistently fallen – from around 13 million in 1990 to 9.7 million in 2006 – the maternal mortality toll has remained stubbornly similar. For decades, the international estimate of the number of maternal deaths each year has hovered just over the half-million mark.
You might assume from this that maternal deaths are somehow mysterious, untouchable by medical science or development interventions. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth. Not only could the number of maternal deaths be radically reduced, but it could also be done within a few years if only there were sufficient will.
This was one reason why, when the Millennium Development Goals were set in 2000, arguably the most ambitious of all the targets set was in relation to maternal mortality. Whereas the target was to cut poverty in half and to cut child mortality by two-thirds, the aspiration was to slash the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters. The chart overleaf shows just how far the world is falling short.
This is where the gulf between rich and poor worlds is at its widest and most obscene. The lifetime risk of maternal death is just 1 in 8,000 in the Global North compared with 1 in 76 in the Global South. At the national extremes, an Irish woman has a 1 in 47,600 chance of dying from a pregnancy-related cause compared with a staggering 1 in 7 chance of death for a woman in Niger.
No matter how good the supervision or the medical facilities, some deaths in childbirth will always occur. But the statistics indicate clearly how much less hazardous it is for a woman in the West now to have a baby than it was for previous generations. There is no point in pretending that Ireland’s remarkable safety record could be replicated overnight all over the world. But the Millennium Development Goal could certainly still be achieved – even now, with only 6 years of the 25 left to run, when such pathetic progress has been made to date. And, were we to do so, 400,000 women every year would be saved from unnecessary death – and their husbands, children and families from unimaginable grief.
Given this, there are just two big questions to ask. How might these lives be saved? And, if we know how to save them, why isn’t it happening?
The ‘how’ is surprisingly straightforward. The best way to reduce maternal mortality (as well as the deaths of newborn babies) is to ensure that all births are attended by skilled health workers – trained midwives, nurses or doctors. At the moment only 59 per cent of births in the developing world are attended. The lowest rates of skilled attendance are in South Asia (41 per cent) and sub-Saharan Africa (43 per cent) and it is no coincidence that these are also the regions with the highest incidence of both maternal and neonatal mortality. If you live in the countryside in one of those regions, moreover, you’re about half as likely to have your birth attended as if you live in a city.
Ensuring that skilled workers are there during the delivery will cut out many of the unnecessary deaths. To save even more lives, a suitably equipped maternity centre needs to be within reasonable striking distance (less than two hours’ journey away) if some major obstetric complication arises.
In the simplest terms, if every birth were attended by a skilled health worker the numbers of maternal deaths would tumble
Of course there are all kinds of other factors involved that would further reduce maternal mortality – among them better nutrition for pregnant women, better access to contraception, antenatal and postnatal visits, teaching each pregnant woman and her family about the danger signs. But, in the simplest terms, if every birth were attended by a skilled health worker the numbers of maternal deaths would tumble.
If it is that simple, that attainable, why is it not happening? Is this not something the whole world could agree on as an uncontentious objective? Isn’t motherhood, like apple pie, supposed to be an unchallengeable good?
Actually, the stubborn lack of progress on maternal mortality suggests that the root cause lies in women’s disadvantaged position in most countries and cultures. In countries with similar levels of economic development, maternal mortality tends to be inversely proportional to women’s status – in other words, the worse women are treated in society in general, the more likely they are to die in childbirth.1
Against this background of discrimination, often handed down from generation to generation by cultural tradition, initiatives to enhance maternal health need to go hand in hand with measures to promote women’s rights and to protect girls and women from violence, exploitation and abuse. Getting girls into school is a fast track to improving maternal health (and the health of their children) later; it also helps to protect them from child marriage, with its inevitable consequences of premature pregnancy and motherhood. The evidence is clear that educated adolescents are more likely to wait until they are out of their teenage years, when pregnancy risks are highest, to begin a family, and are more likely to have healthy babies. Pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths are the leading cause of mortality for girls aged 15-19 worldwide, killing 70,000 every year. Girls who give birth at even younger ages than 15 are even more at risk due to their physical immaturity, being five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties.2
Because there is such a close link between women’s oppression and maternal mortality, we need to treat maternal health as a fundamental human right – especially if we are to reach the poorest and most socially excluded women. The Convention to Eliminate Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which has been ratified by 185 countries, requires that governments ‘ensure to women appropriate services in connection with pregnancy, confinement and the post-natal period, granting free services where necessary, as well as adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation’. Very few developing countries are currently delivering on this commitment.
So women’s oppression is part of the background. But don’t go away thinking that this means there’s little that can be done about maternal mortality. The scandal is that mothers are dying unnecessarily because the world is unprepared to stump up the relatively meagre resources required to protect them.
That maternal deaths could be reduced by making sure all deliveries were attended has been known for decades – certainly ever since the international conference at Alma Ata in 1978 that propounded the notion of Primary Healthcare. The Alma Ata vision was of relatively low-cost outreach workers in communities, building on the model of ‘barefoot doctors’ pioneered in Maoist China. But those health workers and midwives at work out in the community were always supposed to be backed up by clinics – and beyond them hospitals to which they could refer patients.
The scandal is that mothers are dying unnecessarily because the world is unprepared to stump up the relatively meagre resources required to protect them
This eminently sensible model of an integrated healthcare system that could have transformed the lives of people right across the Majority World was abandoned almost entirely because those pulling the purse-strings of ‘development’ considered this to be too expensive.
It was replaced in the 1980s by the disastrous idea that the funding gap in health should be met by getting the ‘consumers’ themselves to pay user fees. The legacy of that approach is still killing women all over Africa and South Asia, where the poor inevitably take their chances rather than pay for care, just as Habibu did.
A great deal of time and many millions of lives have been lost in the intervening decades since the vision of the Alma Ata Declaration was articulated, but we have returned to the same point. An integrated health system that would allow the MDGs to be met, and would transform maternal, neonatal and child health worldwide, is still achievable – provided the necessary resources are invested.
We could not get overnight to the point where all births are attended and have access to emergency obstetric care when needed – especially given the drain of doctors and nurses away from the countryside and even from Majority to Minority Worlds. There is at present a shortage of 2.3 million doctors, nurses and midwives spread across 57 countries.3 But ultimately it is still a question of resources: if we spent the money required to create health systems that functioned properly, we could still solve this problem in time to meet the MDG target.4
Back in 2003, global development assistance to maternal and neonatal health stood at $663 million a year. It was estimated then that an extra $6.1 billion would be required each year by 2015 to increase coverage to desired levels.5 To put this in perspective, the economic impact of maternal and newborn deaths has been estimated at $15 billion per year in lost productivity, while global military spending passes the $6-billion mark every one-and-a-half days.6
As global recession takes hold and the economic meltdown continues, it will be argued that such resources cannot easily be found. Yet with what ease are hundreds of billions of dollars found to bail out banks, to insure the financial system against its bad debts! Why could we not, over the last two decades, have found the much smaller sums necessary to bail out poor countries by investing in the kind of health services they so badly needed? Why could we not, long ago, have spent the sums necessary to insure young women and their families the world over against death and disability?
This article began by telling the story of Habibu, before sweeping off into the realms of statistics and health policies to make its case. But it is all too easy in discussing the global situation to forget that every single one of the 536,000 mothers who die in childbirth each year has her own story just like Habibu’s. Like her, they approached their labour full of expectation and hope for the new life that they were about to bring into the world, only to die for want of the care that should have been their right – and that mothers in the rich world routinely expect. We should hold stories like theirs in the forefront of our minds as we consider in the months and years ahead exactly what kind of world economy we are now to remake.
The Lancet 2006: 368: 1535-41.
Giving Girls Today and Tomorrow: Breaking the Cycle of Adolescent Pregnancy, UNFPA 2007, citing various sources.
World Health Report 2006.
For more detail on how the MDG target could still be met, see UNICEF’s two flagship publications Progress for Children No 7, September 2008 and The State of the World’s Children 2009, both accessible via http://www.unicef.org/
From T Powell-Jackson et al, ‘A countdown to 2015: tracking donor assistance to maternal, newborn and child health’, cited in The Lancet 2006: 368: 1535-41.
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), speech to the UN General Assembly, reported in Thalif Deen, ‘UN Poverty Goals Face New Threats’, Terra Viva UN Journal, 3 April 2008, Vol 16, No 57.
Apologies
Only half of the following post actually took, a lot of the data i.e. charts and maps are missing. If you would like a link to the article, please contact me.
Why are women still dying in childbirth?
Maternal Mortality - The Facts
There is a bigger gulf in experience between the Global North and the Global South in maternal death rates than there is on any other human development measure. The average lifetime risk of maternal death in the rich world is 1 in 8,000, compared with 1 in 850 in developing countries and 1 in 450 in least developed countries.
The countries where mothers are most (and least) at risk
The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) shows deaths per 100,000 live births; the lifetime risk also takes into account the fertility rate.
Over 84% of maternal deaths occur in Africa and South Asia
Skilled birth attendance
This map shows the percentage of births attended by skilled health personnel around the world in the 2000-06 period. Note how similar it is to the map of maternal mortality rates on the facing page – making sure that all births are overseen by health workers is the single most important means of preventing maternal and newborn deaths.
Why do women die giving birth?
Haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death in both Africa and Asia.
Most mothers who die come from just 10 countries
There is a bigger gulf in experience between the Global North and the Global South in maternal death rates than there is on any other human development measure. The average lifetime risk of maternal death in the rich world is 1 in 8,000, compared with 1 in 850 in developing countries and 1 in 450 in least developed countries.
The countries where mothers are most (and least) at risk
The maternal mortality ratio (MMR) shows deaths per 100,000 live births; the lifetime risk also takes into account the fertility rate.
Over 84% of maternal deaths occur in Africa and South Asia
Skilled birth attendance
This map shows the percentage of births attended by skilled health personnel around the world in the 2000-06 period. Note how similar it is to the map of maternal mortality rates on the facing page – making sure that all births are overseen by health workers is the single most important means of preventing maternal and newborn deaths.
Why do women die giving birth?
Haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death in both Africa and Asia.
Most mothers who die come from just 10 countries
Be Part of a Global Condemnation of "Corrective" Rape of Lesbians in South Africa
A new ActionAid report describes the chilling rise of "corrective" rape in South Africa - in which South African lesbians are being raped in an effort to "cure" them of their sexual orientation.
This shocking act of sexual violence must also be considered a hate crime >>
Support groups in Cape Town say they see 10 new cases of "corrective" rape every week. And it's even more widespread around the rest of the country.
Many perpetrators of rape already go unpunished in South Africa, but the situation is even worse for lesbian women. Indeed, 31 lesbian women have been murdered in homophobic attacks since 1998, but in only one of these cases has there been a conviction.
Although South Africa's constitution recognizes rights of gay and lesbian people, its legal system does not view crimes committed against gay and lesbians on the basis of sexual orientation to be hate crimes. The South African legal system must recognize "corrective" rape as a hate crime in addition to a rape in order to establish a greater punishment for this brutal and widespread crime.
Urge South African President Kgalema Motlanthe to deem "corrective" rape a hate crime! >>
A new ActionAid report describes the chilling rise of "corrective" rape in South Africa - in which South African lesbians are being raped in an effort to "cure" them of their sexual orientation.
This shocking act of sexual violence must also be considered a hate crime >>
Support groups in Cape Town say they see 10 new cases of "corrective" rape every week. And it's even more widespread around the rest of the country.
Many perpetrators of rape already go unpunished in South Africa, but the situation is even worse for lesbian women. Indeed, 31 lesbian women have been murdered in homophobic attacks since 1998, but in only one of these cases has there been a conviction.
Although South Africa's constitution recognizes rights of gay and lesbian people, its legal system does not view crimes committed against gay and lesbians on the basis of sexual orientation to be hate crimes. The South African legal system must recognize "corrective" rape as a hate crime in addition to a rape in order to establish a greater punishment for this brutal and widespread crime.
Urge South African President Kgalema Motlanthe to deem "corrective" rape a hate crime! >>
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Welfare Reform
I cannot believe that in the 21st Century we have people advocating "culling", "sterilisation" of people who receive welfare benefits. I shook my head with disbelief as people typed this right wing tory/bnp rubbish into a chatroom.
Why the hell did our forefathers give their lives to rid us of the evils of nazism, they wasted their time, it is alive and well in Great Britain, spurred on by the press.
The targets - people on benefits, particularly single mothers, but also the sick and disabled.
One bright spark announced - cut their benefits they'll soon get better, this from a supposedly educated person. Illnesses like epilepsy, diabetes, arthritis, cancer and many other illnesses don't disappear overnight - taking away the benefits of people with conditions like this will mean they won't get treatment. We would just revert to pre welfare system. Those with any savings or any income would live, those without, tough.
Then we have cull them and sterilise them brigade - it is very easy to target women, single mothers, and whilst I agree that some do have babies for benefits, what about those who are single through divorce or widowhood. No one knows what is going to happen to them, I didn't know when I got married that in less than ten years I would be widowed with a small child. You could have an accident, be ill, lose your job - it doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't warrant being culled or sterilised either.
And why only target the women - I always thought it took a man and a woman to make a baby - yet only the women are targetted - and why should the children suffer. This government pledged to end child poverty. Yet the very groups that are impoverished are yet again targetted.
It seems this hysteria against people on benefits, spurred on by the vermin press, and brainwashing people to despise those who, through no fault of their own in the majority of cases, are less fortunate. The breakdown of christian (and other religious values) and the selfish attitude which came into the fore during the Thatcher years, have all played a part in the situation we see today.
Have we learnt nothing from the 40's? Blaming groups of people for the misfortunes of all societies - let's make these people second class citizens, better still they are sub human, inferior. Let's not let them have any human rights. Then what follows? A return to the gas chambers?
You can't work therefore you die - I could envisage some of the chatroom participants stood there pointing the way.
I am not assured that the right groups i.e. those who are workshy and abusing the system will be targetted, as in the past, great mistakes have been made against sick and disabled people - the genuine always suffer.
At a time of recession, when more people are losing their jobs, and more pressure is put on the few, again spurred on by the press, those who may need help may not get it. There will be people in such despair who will see no way out.
"Blessed are the poor for they shall see the Kingdom of God" - a bit sooner than they should if these far right thinking twonkos, with their superiority, have their way.
Linda
Why the hell did our forefathers give their lives to rid us of the evils of nazism, they wasted their time, it is alive and well in Great Britain, spurred on by the press.
The targets - people on benefits, particularly single mothers, but also the sick and disabled.
One bright spark announced - cut their benefits they'll soon get better, this from a supposedly educated person. Illnesses like epilepsy, diabetes, arthritis, cancer and many other illnesses don't disappear overnight - taking away the benefits of people with conditions like this will mean they won't get treatment. We would just revert to pre welfare system. Those with any savings or any income would live, those without, tough.
Then we have cull them and sterilise them brigade - it is very easy to target women, single mothers, and whilst I agree that some do have babies for benefits, what about those who are single through divorce or widowhood. No one knows what is going to happen to them, I didn't know when I got married that in less than ten years I would be widowed with a small child. You could have an accident, be ill, lose your job - it doesn't make you less of a person, it doesn't warrant being culled or sterilised either.
And why only target the women - I always thought it took a man and a woman to make a baby - yet only the women are targetted - and why should the children suffer. This government pledged to end child poverty. Yet the very groups that are impoverished are yet again targetted.
It seems this hysteria against people on benefits, spurred on by the vermin press, and brainwashing people to despise those who, through no fault of their own in the majority of cases, are less fortunate. The breakdown of christian (and other religious values) and the selfish attitude which came into the fore during the Thatcher years, have all played a part in the situation we see today.
Have we learnt nothing from the 40's? Blaming groups of people for the misfortunes of all societies - let's make these people second class citizens, better still they are sub human, inferior. Let's not let them have any human rights. Then what follows? A return to the gas chambers?
You can't work therefore you die - I could envisage some of the chatroom participants stood there pointing the way.
I am not assured that the right groups i.e. those who are workshy and abusing the system will be targetted, as in the past, great mistakes have been made against sick and disabled people - the genuine always suffer.
At a time of recession, when more people are losing their jobs, and more pressure is put on the few, again spurred on by the press, those who may need help may not get it. There will be people in such despair who will see no way out.
"Blessed are the poor for they shall see the Kingdom of God" - a bit sooner than they should if these far right thinking twonkos, with their superiority, have their way.
Linda
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Size matters: The Great British weight debate
In Britain, being thin is increasingly seen as a sign of wealth and status, yet more of us are overweight than ever. Are we in danger of becoming a society segregated according to size?
Dr Hamish Meldrum, head of the British Medical Association, is one of life's boffins. With his salt-and-pepper beard and his sensible shoes, he is known for his thoughtful and circumspect comments on all the matters that fall into his remit. But earlier this month, Dr Meldrum seemed to veer off course. He claimed in an interview that fat people are simply greedy and obesity is caused by over eating. "We are in danger of 'over-medicalising' the problem," he said.
Obesity experts were immediately outraged, and said that Dr Meldrum's remarks were unhelpful and anachronistic, as well as politically incorrect. The 88,000 people who were prescribed with anti-obesity prescriptions for drugs like Xenical and Reductil last year, and the one in four Brits who, according to the World Health Organisation, are obese, no doubt felt similarly affronted.
How, they probably wondered, could Dr Meldrum, a medical man, not understand that their problem is genetic, an illness, a cruel compulsion. How could he fail to understand that what fat people need is medical intervention and drugs, and that if this was a simple matter of eating less then they wouldn't be in this position in the first place? And many would also say, what is wrong with being fat anyway?
However, if you are not one of these people, then let me ask you this. How many of you have watched an obese person chowing down on a double hamburger with double fries and a triple cola and thought "Why don't you get it?" How many of you have stood in a newsagent watching an overweight person forcing their overweight hands into a family-sized bag of Doritos and thought "You shouldn't be eating that."
And how many of you listened to Dr Meldrum and thought "He's absolutely bloody spot on."
Right or wrong, the reason Dr Meldrum caused such controversy is because his words in fact marked the latest victory in a cold war that is taking place on every street corner and within every household in the country. Thanks to Dr Meldrum, the skinnies scored again.
While, publicly we all recognize that people can be divided over deep-seated issues such as religion, politics and money, we are now also separated by another issue: fat.
We barely noticed it as it crept its way into our mind, put its roots down in our brain and expanded its tendrils slowly into our consciousness. Slowly, it began to control our views and guide our judgement towards other people. Now, I'm not entirely sure a thin person can look at a fat person without passing a silent judgement, nor can a fat person look at a thin person without sentiment, be that envy or angry defiance. Each side is busy racking up points against the other and at the moment, the skinnies, lead by the likes of Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and Nicole Ritchie, are winning.
They are the most beautiful, they are the most successful, they are the in-crowd. There was once a time when being large was a sign of prosperity but that pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction and now, according to the Office of National Statistics, obesity is more common amongst lower classes and those in "routine or semi-routine occupational groups than the managerial and professional groups". The fatties, despite well-respected and successful figureheads such as Beth Ditto and Kelly Osbourne, are fighting a losing battle to be seen, heard and respected.
Perhaps this is not surprising, given the strength of recent scientific research on the matter, which only seems to fuel the social divide. Take the report published earlier this year in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behaviour. It concluded that fat people actually have the ability to make thin people ill.
The researchers said that thin people instinctively dislike fat people because their immune system associates fat with infection and sends out a signal of disgust. It is, they say, no different than what happens to our bodies when nausea is triggered on encountering a bad smell.
The study points out that "antipathy towards obese people is a powerful and pervasive prejudice" but suggests that far from being irrational, this could be rooted in a clever Darwinian desire to protect against signs of disease.
Another recent study, carried out at the University of California, showed that obesity spreads within social networks and that people with fat friends are 50 per cent more likely to be overweight than those who hang out with skinny people.
These things considered, its difficult not to wonder if one day the fat and the thin will live as two separate tribes, or perhaps, eventually, species.
Peter Marsh, the co-director of the Oxford based Social Issues Research Centre has just completed a report on "Belonging" in 21st century Britain; he agrees that fat and thin is enough to drive the population into distinct groups.
"We consider ourselves individuals, but it is our membership of particular groups that is most important in constructing a sense of identity" he says. "Without doubt, there is escalating polarization between fat and thin and we suspect that will continue for some time. Couple that with a general sense in Britain that thin equals beautiful and healthy, and what you have is a growing sense that thin is 'in' and fat is very much 'out.'
"This means that members of the thin group grow in power, with better access to jobs and a voice that is more likely to be heard, while fat people feel like an unpopular minority and are without doubt stigmatized. They feel increasingly inadequate, insecure and neurotic, pinning all their hopes on fad diets. Which is a depressing thought given that in the long term, research has proven that those who spend their lives on diets actually end up larger than those who don't diet."
This segregation is, without doubt, growing more extreme, and in some cases more bizarre, by the day. In America, trendsetters such as the website Style.com and The New York Times have named "the bony parts", namely legs and ' the clavicle, as the "new erogenous zones". Really? Even skinnies should now be asking themselves whether it's really possible that the sight of a razor-edged collar bone can make men weak at the knees in the same way as an image of Scarlett Johanson's cleavage?
But no, their stampede continues regardless, and their propaganda grows stronger by the day. The book Skinny Bitch, of which Victoria Beckham is a fan, has become a bestseller and every serious-minded skinny has a copy. It promotes a vegan lifestyle of fruit, vegetables and whole grains and is billed as a "no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous."
The quiet town of Buckingham has also morphed into a skinny mecca. Scientists there are busy working on a baby formula with the power to programme babies' metabolisms to prevent them from ever getting fat. No doubt, if successful, it will make them all billionaires. The drug will influence levels of the hormone leptin, which is thought to act on the hypothalamus which influences food intake and energy expenditure in the long term. If the hypothalamus can be programmed to guarantee your baby girl will still be able to slip into her 26-inch waist jeans even after having three children, thanks to a quick injection shortly after birth, then why not.
And the goalposts of what is thin have been firmly moved too. Once, a size 10 was good enough. Now, unless you've been hiding in a cave in the Outer Hebrides, you will be more than aware that a size zero is the new ideal. In LA, women are apparently achieving this by taking a veterinary medication called clenbuterol. Normally used to treat asthma in horses, it causes rapid weight loss in humans.
I was offered the job of reporter on a recent Channel 4 documentary which would have involved me effectively starving myself and over-exercising for 10 weeks to see if I could achieve a size zero. I was told I'd also need to eat cotton wool, make myself sick, purge on laxatives and live on a diet of only lemonade and cayenne pepper.
I turned the job down on the grounds of a desire to preserve my sanity, but I was left wondering if the programme's producer might be secretly longing to take on the role herself. She talked to me as if the entire female population of the world were worshipping at the altar of size-zero women.
Everyone, I thought, save for the mothers of two size-zero models, 21-year-old Brazilian Ana Carolina Reston and Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, who recently died of the results of their starvation diets, and the parents of the legions of girls with eating disorders who refuse to eat in the hope of one day looking as thin as Paris Hilton.
Thin may be in, but it is impossible to avoid the fact eating disorders across all ages, from children to middle-aged women, are on the rise. Online, pro anorexic groups, where girls boast of choosing an anorexic lifestyle and post "thinspiration" pictures of skinny celebrities, are thriving.
One clinic in Scotland recently reported a four-fold increase in women in their 30s, 40s and 50s being admitted with anorexia and bulimia. Surely something has gone wrong when middle-aged women subject themselves to tortuous gym routines and starvation diets when a decade ago they would have been more concerned with getting the children to pony club on time. But then, 10 years ago, they didn't have to wake up to see the likes of Madonna, fast approaching 50, prancing around in a high-cut leotard and putting everyone else her age to shame.
Dr Helena Fox is an eating-disorder specialist and consultant psychiatrist at the Capio Nightingale psychiatric hospital in London, and runs a clinic that is permanently full. She believes that current super-thin standards will only lead more women to knock at her door.
"Although there are many factors that lead to eating disorders, the bottom line is that my patients simply believe that if they are going to be successful, considered attractive and be able to do things like get married and find a husband, they have to be skinny," says Dr Fox. "They say things like 'Yesterday was a good day.' When I ask them what this means, it turns out they mean they only ate three lettuce leaves. In today's world, that has become an achievement."
Thankfully, a backlash has begun against the skinny army, but what it will achieve is not yet known. In America, we are now seeing the rise of so-called "fat acceptance groups", such as NAAFA (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) which empower obese people to live more fulfilling lives. Groups meet to offer support and advice to each other just as Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous do.
The likes of Beth Ditto and Tyra Banks are attempting to do their bit too. Banks, after being pictured in a less than flattering swimsuit last December, told those that criticized her to "kiss my fat ass" and started a campaign called So What! which aimed at encouraging women to be positive about their bodies. Beth Ditto is rumoured to be bringing out her own plus-size clothes line.
Following in their wake is American comedian and actress Mo'nique, a size 18, who bills herself as a "fat woman talking about being a fat woman." Her book, Skinny Women Are Evil, is about raising the plus-size army to fight back against the skinnies, and quickly became a best seller.
"I wish I didn't have to write the book, but I did because big women are subjected to ridicule simply because we're blessed with a few extra pounds," she says. "I've enjoyed a life-long affair with every roll, every curve and every pound, and because I've always loved me, I've never felt the need to apologise.
"Skinny women are the most intolerant, competitive, judgemental, shallow, sharp-tongued creatures to walk the face of the earth, and just because we like to eat doesn't meant there shouldn't be room in the spotlight for us to shine too."
A backlash is evident on British shores as well, although without quite the same veracity. Nonetheless, issues like model health are being tackled. Although the Interim Report of the Model Health Inquiry, for instance, stopped short of enforcing rigorous measures to weigh models or test their BMI, it did recommend models aged under 16 be banned from runways and also suggested designers should be trained to help models with eating disorders, and that all models should receive education about healthy eating.
And a new Channel 4 series, despite being dubiously named Cook Yourself Thin, is about ditching diet books and learning to cook from scratch. It is fronted by a Claudia Schiffer's ex chef Sophie Michell, who despite cooking for a supermodel is herself a rounded size 12.
"We've lost all sense of middle ground when it comes to weight," says Sophie, who has been critised for being too plump to be qualified to talk about weight loss. "I did a demonstration with some girls recently and they literally backed away from the counter when I got out the olive oil. Why is it that it's no longer enough to be just healthy?"
But it is difficult to be entirely convinced of the rectitude of this backlash. Tyra Banks, for example, undid her good work when she lost two stone this summer, suggesting that despite her bravado, she had taken the criticism to heart.
And take the very public case of Anne Diamond, the British television presenter. She spent years being overweight and a role model for bigger women. Then she had a gastric band fitted. "Being overweight affected every day of my life," says Diamond. "It isn't easy starting the day with a smile when all you can do is pull on a pair of size 22 stretch black trousers and a T-shirt that could shelter a dozen earthquake victims. You feel wretched. It shouldn't, but fat demeans you, even in your own eyes."
Perhaps, no matter how proud they appear and what they say, the fat can't help but wish they were thin.
As with any war, the only real solution lies in coming together and developing a mutual respect for the other's position. This would seem especially poignant given the thoughts of Dr Adrienne Key, a specialist at the Priory Clinic.
She points out that both extremely fat and super thin are part of the same psychologically disrupted attitude to food that is endemic in Western consumer societies. Third World cultures, she says, do not suffer from a wish to be a size zero, nor do they experience obesity. Fat people and thin people, she says, are fighting the same battle.
This knowledge however, is unlikelyto spur either side to lay down arms, let alone call a truce. No, this is a battle that for the immediate future at least, is here to stay. *
Fiona Wright: So I'm skinny, get over it
I've been slim all my life. I've never dieted, I rarely go to the gym and I'm a size eight. Even having two children in quick succession has made no difference to my weight. In fact, I'm thinner now than I was before. Do you hate me? I spend my life being chastised by my friends. "You don't eat enough," they cry. "You're too thin, your legs will snap."
I've never really minded though, because I know the secret code. People who criticise me for being slim are jealous. "Skinny cow" translates roughly as "I want to be slim like you." Adults rarely mock fat people, because no one likes kicking someone when they're down.
Most people think I must have good genes or I'm just lucky. The bottom line is, I just don't eat that much. I don't consciously diet, but I eat healthy food in moderate portions. I don't obsess about it. To be honest, I don't really think about it. And there's the rub. Fat people do think about food – a great deal. They know that they can lose weight by eating less, but they choose not to. And let's be clear here, it is a choice. Over-eating is a vice. It makes people feel better, temporarily. If you're eating because you're unhappy or bored, unless that changes, you won't stop eating.
I'm not suggesting that I lead this flawless life, but I don't rely on food to bolster my feelings. Because whether we like it or not, looks count, and looking fit, slim and healthy is about taking responsibility for yourself. If you're very fat, whether it's true or not, people think you have no will-power and no self-respect. They think you're not good at your job, not good spouse material, not well-paid and not successful. I know I'm going to get hate mail for this, but after doing a quick poll in the office, no one disagreed with me. Apart from anything else, being fat is not good for your health. Lovely, clever Dawn French and Fern Britton can protest all they like about being happy with their size, but they are more likely to die earlier than thin people. And that really is the bottom line.
Ursula Hirschkorn: Fat and proud
Anyone would think that being able to squeeze your skinny haunches into a size zero was some sort of Nobel Prize-worthy achievement, the way we laud those few women who manage it.
Posh Spice, Nicole Richie – what's their talent apart from an ability to say no to food? Who cares when their bony behinds have dozens of picture spreads devoted to them?
But what good is a seriously skinny body, if no one gets to enjoy it, least of all yourself? I've been a size six (a US size 2), and I was miserable as sin, caught like a hamster in a constant cycle of fitness and fasting, just so I could keep track of every bone in my ribcage.
After years of starving myself to keep slim, I realised I was on the wrong side of the battle against fat, and that I should give in and let my inner big girl out to play.
I'd brainwashed myself that when it came to diet, dainty was best, picking salad over steak, espresso over ice cream, but who was I kidding? If cottage cheese really was tastier than a luxuriously creamy korma, we'd all be size zero and it'd be no big deal.
The new, super-sized me can enjoy a meal out with friends without salivating over their every mouthful as I toy with a salad leaf; I can sleep in, instead of setting the alarm for 6am for daily trips to the gym; and I can grow out of my clothes and into my curves.
Give me the choice between size zero, or 2-0, and I'll race you to the plus-size rail. It's not that I have anything against the skinnies (after all, it's nothing a few cream cakes can't cure), it's just being fat is so much more fun.
Skinny nation
The role models
1. Kate Moss: Veteran waif and supermodel.
2. Rachel Zoe: Anorexic-looking stylist to the stars "credited" with starting the size-zero movement.
3. Angelina Jolie: Skinnier with every new child.
4. Victoria Beckham: Number one "thinspiration" role model on pro-anorexia websites (which promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice).
5. Mischa Barton: Admits she'd be "frightened" of having the voluptuous figure of her former 'The OC' co-star Rachel Bilson.
6. Nicole Ritchie: Actress and singer said, pre-pregnancy, to weigh just six stone.
7. Kate Bosworth: Once a glowing surf chick, now one of the " lollipop head brigade".
The culture
Books: 'Skinny Bitch' by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, 'How the Rich Get Thin' by Dr Jana Klauer, 'That Extra Half Inch' by Victoria Beckham.
Television: 'You are What You Eat' presented by ferociously sinewy Gillian McKeith
Holidays: The Mayr Clinic in Austria, for a fortnight of colonic irrigation, stale bread and starvation.
Food and drink: Luscious Organic, Kensington, one of Britain's only macrobiotic restaurants; Skinny Water – bottled water fortified with L-Carnitine and Chromium, said to aid weight loss.
The facts
Beat, the UK eating disorders charity, estimates there are 1.15 million people in Britain with eating disorders. According to the Department of Health, some 15 per cent of cases of anorexia result in death, caused mainly by suicide, and complications due to starvation. Being underweight raises risk of osteoporosis and brittle bones, heart attack, kidney failure and infertility.
'Size zero' is a equivalent to UK size 4 and a 22in waist.
Big Britain
The role models
1. Beth Ditto: Hefty rock singer and friend of Kate Moss who says she's never tried a Slim Fast in her life.
2. Lily Allen: Won legions of fans when she posted a video of herself crying on MySpace, saying she felt "a bit chubby".
3. Coleen McLoughlin: Wayne Rooney's fiancee proves an average girl with an average body can make millions.
4. Fern Britton: Self-confident size-16 TV presenter.
5. Kelly Osbourne: The singer and fashion designer who never outgrew her puppy fat.
6. Dawn French: Large-and -proud comedienne who is convinced she will shortly die (not,ironically, it seems from health-related problems)
7. Tyra Banks: once a supermodel, now proclaiming "Kiss my fat ass" on behalf of all plus-sized women.
The culture
Music: Mika's 'Big Girl (You are Beautiful)', Mutya Buena's 'Real Girl' and 'Ugly' by The Sugababes.
Books: 'Skinny Women are Evil', by Mo'Nique, 'Fat Chicks Rule!' by Lara Frater, 'Fat is a Feminist Issue' by Susie Orbach.
Films: 'Hairspray' (2007), in which "pleasantly plump" Tracy Turnblad proves weight is no obstacle to fame.
Art: Jenny Saville's oil paintings of curvaceous nudes.
The facts
A BMI (body mass index) of over 30 is referred to as obese, over 35 is known as morbid obesity, and over 40 indicates extreme obesity. Obesity is responsible for more than 9,000 premature deaths per year in England and increases risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. A report by the World HealthOrganisation also suggests that health is compromised when waist measurement exceeds 94cm (37in) for men or 80cm (32in) for women. .
Dr Hamish Meldrum, head of the British Medical Association, is one of life's boffins. With his salt-and-pepper beard and his sensible shoes, he is known for his thoughtful and circumspect comments on all the matters that fall into his remit. But earlier this month, Dr Meldrum seemed to veer off course. He claimed in an interview that fat people are simply greedy and obesity is caused by over eating. "We are in danger of 'over-medicalising' the problem," he said.
Obesity experts were immediately outraged, and said that Dr Meldrum's remarks were unhelpful and anachronistic, as well as politically incorrect. The 88,000 people who were prescribed with anti-obesity prescriptions for drugs like Xenical and Reductil last year, and the one in four Brits who, according to the World Health Organisation, are obese, no doubt felt similarly affronted.
How, they probably wondered, could Dr Meldrum, a medical man, not understand that their problem is genetic, an illness, a cruel compulsion. How could he fail to understand that what fat people need is medical intervention and drugs, and that if this was a simple matter of eating less then they wouldn't be in this position in the first place? And many would also say, what is wrong with being fat anyway?
However, if you are not one of these people, then let me ask you this. How many of you have watched an obese person chowing down on a double hamburger with double fries and a triple cola and thought "Why don't you get it?" How many of you have stood in a newsagent watching an overweight person forcing their overweight hands into a family-sized bag of Doritos and thought "You shouldn't be eating that."
And how many of you listened to Dr Meldrum and thought "He's absolutely bloody spot on."
Right or wrong, the reason Dr Meldrum caused such controversy is because his words in fact marked the latest victory in a cold war that is taking place on every street corner and within every household in the country. Thanks to Dr Meldrum, the skinnies scored again.
While, publicly we all recognize that people can be divided over deep-seated issues such as religion, politics and money, we are now also separated by another issue: fat.
We barely noticed it as it crept its way into our mind, put its roots down in our brain and expanded its tendrils slowly into our consciousness. Slowly, it began to control our views and guide our judgement towards other people. Now, I'm not entirely sure a thin person can look at a fat person without passing a silent judgement, nor can a fat person look at a thin person without sentiment, be that envy or angry defiance. Each side is busy racking up points against the other and at the moment, the skinnies, lead by the likes of Victoria Beckham, Kate Moss and Nicole Ritchie, are winning.
They are the most beautiful, they are the most successful, they are the in-crowd. There was once a time when being large was a sign of prosperity but that pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction and now, according to the Office of National Statistics, obesity is more common amongst lower classes and those in "routine or semi-routine occupational groups than the managerial and professional groups". The fatties, despite well-respected and successful figureheads such as Beth Ditto and Kelly Osbourne, are fighting a losing battle to be seen, heard and respected.
Perhaps this is not surprising, given the strength of recent scientific research on the matter, which only seems to fuel the social divide. Take the report published earlier this year in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behaviour. It concluded that fat people actually have the ability to make thin people ill.
The researchers said that thin people instinctively dislike fat people because their immune system associates fat with infection and sends out a signal of disgust. It is, they say, no different than what happens to our bodies when nausea is triggered on encountering a bad smell.
The study points out that "antipathy towards obese people is a powerful and pervasive prejudice" but suggests that far from being irrational, this could be rooted in a clever Darwinian desire to protect against signs of disease.
Another recent study, carried out at the University of California, showed that obesity spreads within social networks and that people with fat friends are 50 per cent more likely to be overweight than those who hang out with skinny people.
These things considered, its difficult not to wonder if one day the fat and the thin will live as two separate tribes, or perhaps, eventually, species.
Peter Marsh, the co-director of the Oxford based Social Issues Research Centre has just completed a report on "Belonging" in 21st century Britain; he agrees that fat and thin is enough to drive the population into distinct groups.
"We consider ourselves individuals, but it is our membership of particular groups that is most important in constructing a sense of identity" he says. "Without doubt, there is escalating polarization between fat and thin and we suspect that will continue for some time. Couple that with a general sense in Britain that thin equals beautiful and healthy, and what you have is a growing sense that thin is 'in' and fat is very much 'out.'
"This means that members of the thin group grow in power, with better access to jobs and a voice that is more likely to be heard, while fat people feel like an unpopular minority and are without doubt stigmatized. They feel increasingly inadequate, insecure and neurotic, pinning all their hopes on fad diets. Which is a depressing thought given that in the long term, research has proven that those who spend their lives on diets actually end up larger than those who don't diet."
This segregation is, without doubt, growing more extreme, and in some cases more bizarre, by the day. In America, trendsetters such as the website Style.com and The New York Times have named "the bony parts", namely legs and ' the clavicle, as the "new erogenous zones". Really? Even skinnies should now be asking themselves whether it's really possible that the sight of a razor-edged collar bone can make men weak at the knees in the same way as an image of Scarlett Johanson's cleavage?
But no, their stampede continues regardless, and their propaganda grows stronger by the day. The book Skinny Bitch, of which Victoria Beckham is a fan, has become a bestseller and every serious-minded skinny has a copy. It promotes a vegan lifestyle of fruit, vegetables and whole grains and is billed as a "no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous."
The quiet town of Buckingham has also morphed into a skinny mecca. Scientists there are busy working on a baby formula with the power to programme babies' metabolisms to prevent them from ever getting fat. No doubt, if successful, it will make them all billionaires. The drug will influence levels of the hormone leptin, which is thought to act on the hypothalamus which influences food intake and energy expenditure in the long term. If the hypothalamus can be programmed to guarantee your baby girl will still be able to slip into her 26-inch waist jeans even after having three children, thanks to a quick injection shortly after birth, then why not.
And the goalposts of what is thin have been firmly moved too. Once, a size 10 was good enough. Now, unless you've been hiding in a cave in the Outer Hebrides, you will be more than aware that a size zero is the new ideal. In LA, women are apparently achieving this by taking a veterinary medication called clenbuterol. Normally used to treat asthma in horses, it causes rapid weight loss in humans.
I was offered the job of reporter on a recent Channel 4 documentary which would have involved me effectively starving myself and over-exercising for 10 weeks to see if I could achieve a size zero. I was told I'd also need to eat cotton wool, make myself sick, purge on laxatives and live on a diet of only lemonade and cayenne pepper.
I turned the job down on the grounds of a desire to preserve my sanity, but I was left wondering if the programme's producer might be secretly longing to take on the role herself. She talked to me as if the entire female population of the world were worshipping at the altar of size-zero women.
Everyone, I thought, save for the mothers of two size-zero models, 21-year-old Brazilian Ana Carolina Reston and Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, who recently died of the results of their starvation diets, and the parents of the legions of girls with eating disorders who refuse to eat in the hope of one day looking as thin as Paris Hilton.
Thin may be in, but it is impossible to avoid the fact eating disorders across all ages, from children to middle-aged women, are on the rise. Online, pro anorexic groups, where girls boast of choosing an anorexic lifestyle and post "thinspiration" pictures of skinny celebrities, are thriving.
One clinic in Scotland recently reported a four-fold increase in women in their 30s, 40s and 50s being admitted with anorexia and bulimia. Surely something has gone wrong when middle-aged women subject themselves to tortuous gym routines and starvation diets when a decade ago they would have been more concerned with getting the children to pony club on time. But then, 10 years ago, they didn't have to wake up to see the likes of Madonna, fast approaching 50, prancing around in a high-cut leotard and putting everyone else her age to shame.
Dr Helena Fox is an eating-disorder specialist and consultant psychiatrist at the Capio Nightingale psychiatric hospital in London, and runs a clinic that is permanently full. She believes that current super-thin standards will only lead more women to knock at her door.
"Although there are many factors that lead to eating disorders, the bottom line is that my patients simply believe that if they are going to be successful, considered attractive and be able to do things like get married and find a husband, they have to be skinny," says Dr Fox. "They say things like 'Yesterday was a good day.' When I ask them what this means, it turns out they mean they only ate three lettuce leaves. In today's world, that has become an achievement."
Thankfully, a backlash has begun against the skinny army, but what it will achieve is not yet known. In America, we are now seeing the rise of so-called "fat acceptance groups", such as NAAFA (the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) which empower obese people to live more fulfilling lives. Groups meet to offer support and advice to each other just as Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous do.
The likes of Beth Ditto and Tyra Banks are attempting to do their bit too. Banks, after being pictured in a less than flattering swimsuit last December, told those that criticized her to "kiss my fat ass" and started a campaign called So What! which aimed at encouraging women to be positive about their bodies. Beth Ditto is rumoured to be bringing out her own plus-size clothes line.
Following in their wake is American comedian and actress Mo'nique, a size 18, who bills herself as a "fat woman talking about being a fat woman." Her book, Skinny Women Are Evil, is about raising the plus-size army to fight back against the skinnies, and quickly became a best seller.
"I wish I didn't have to write the book, but I did because big women are subjected to ridicule simply because we're blessed with a few extra pounds," she says. "I've enjoyed a life-long affair with every roll, every curve and every pound, and because I've always loved me, I've never felt the need to apologise.
"Skinny women are the most intolerant, competitive, judgemental, shallow, sharp-tongued creatures to walk the face of the earth, and just because we like to eat doesn't meant there shouldn't be room in the spotlight for us to shine too."
A backlash is evident on British shores as well, although without quite the same veracity. Nonetheless, issues like model health are being tackled. Although the Interim Report of the Model Health Inquiry, for instance, stopped short of enforcing rigorous measures to weigh models or test their BMI, it did recommend models aged under 16 be banned from runways and also suggested designers should be trained to help models with eating disorders, and that all models should receive education about healthy eating.
And a new Channel 4 series, despite being dubiously named Cook Yourself Thin, is about ditching diet books and learning to cook from scratch. It is fronted by a Claudia Schiffer's ex chef Sophie Michell, who despite cooking for a supermodel is herself a rounded size 12.
"We've lost all sense of middle ground when it comes to weight," says Sophie, who has been critised for being too plump to be qualified to talk about weight loss. "I did a demonstration with some girls recently and they literally backed away from the counter when I got out the olive oil. Why is it that it's no longer enough to be just healthy?"
But it is difficult to be entirely convinced of the rectitude of this backlash. Tyra Banks, for example, undid her good work when she lost two stone this summer, suggesting that despite her bravado, she had taken the criticism to heart.
And take the very public case of Anne Diamond, the British television presenter. She spent years being overweight and a role model for bigger women. Then she had a gastric band fitted. "Being overweight affected every day of my life," says Diamond. "It isn't easy starting the day with a smile when all you can do is pull on a pair of size 22 stretch black trousers and a T-shirt that could shelter a dozen earthquake victims. You feel wretched. It shouldn't, but fat demeans you, even in your own eyes."
Perhaps, no matter how proud they appear and what they say, the fat can't help but wish they were thin.
As with any war, the only real solution lies in coming together and developing a mutual respect for the other's position. This would seem especially poignant given the thoughts of Dr Adrienne Key, a specialist at the Priory Clinic.
She points out that both extremely fat and super thin are part of the same psychologically disrupted attitude to food that is endemic in Western consumer societies. Third World cultures, she says, do not suffer from a wish to be a size zero, nor do they experience obesity. Fat people and thin people, she says, are fighting the same battle.
This knowledge however, is unlikelyto spur either side to lay down arms, let alone call a truce. No, this is a battle that for the immediate future at least, is here to stay. *
Fiona Wright: So I'm skinny, get over it
I've been slim all my life. I've never dieted, I rarely go to the gym and I'm a size eight. Even having two children in quick succession has made no difference to my weight. In fact, I'm thinner now than I was before. Do you hate me? I spend my life being chastised by my friends. "You don't eat enough," they cry. "You're too thin, your legs will snap."
I've never really minded though, because I know the secret code. People who criticise me for being slim are jealous. "Skinny cow" translates roughly as "I want to be slim like you." Adults rarely mock fat people, because no one likes kicking someone when they're down.
Most people think I must have good genes or I'm just lucky. The bottom line is, I just don't eat that much. I don't consciously diet, but I eat healthy food in moderate portions. I don't obsess about it. To be honest, I don't really think about it. And there's the rub. Fat people do think about food – a great deal. They know that they can lose weight by eating less, but they choose not to. And let's be clear here, it is a choice. Over-eating is a vice. It makes people feel better, temporarily. If you're eating because you're unhappy or bored, unless that changes, you won't stop eating.
I'm not suggesting that I lead this flawless life, but I don't rely on food to bolster my feelings. Because whether we like it or not, looks count, and looking fit, slim and healthy is about taking responsibility for yourself. If you're very fat, whether it's true or not, people think you have no will-power and no self-respect. They think you're not good at your job, not good spouse material, not well-paid and not successful. I know I'm going to get hate mail for this, but after doing a quick poll in the office, no one disagreed with me. Apart from anything else, being fat is not good for your health. Lovely, clever Dawn French and Fern Britton can protest all they like about being happy with their size, but they are more likely to die earlier than thin people. And that really is the bottom line.
Ursula Hirschkorn: Fat and proud
Anyone would think that being able to squeeze your skinny haunches into a size zero was some sort of Nobel Prize-worthy achievement, the way we laud those few women who manage it.
Posh Spice, Nicole Richie – what's their talent apart from an ability to say no to food? Who cares when their bony behinds have dozens of picture spreads devoted to them?
But what good is a seriously skinny body, if no one gets to enjoy it, least of all yourself? I've been a size six (a US size 2), and I was miserable as sin, caught like a hamster in a constant cycle of fitness and fasting, just so I could keep track of every bone in my ribcage.
After years of starving myself to keep slim, I realised I was on the wrong side of the battle against fat, and that I should give in and let my inner big girl out to play.
I'd brainwashed myself that when it came to diet, dainty was best, picking salad over steak, espresso over ice cream, but who was I kidding? If cottage cheese really was tastier than a luxuriously creamy korma, we'd all be size zero and it'd be no big deal.
The new, super-sized me can enjoy a meal out with friends without salivating over their every mouthful as I toy with a salad leaf; I can sleep in, instead of setting the alarm for 6am for daily trips to the gym; and I can grow out of my clothes and into my curves.
Give me the choice between size zero, or 2-0, and I'll race you to the plus-size rail. It's not that I have anything against the skinnies (after all, it's nothing a few cream cakes can't cure), it's just being fat is so much more fun.
Skinny nation
The role models
1. Kate Moss: Veteran waif and supermodel.
2. Rachel Zoe: Anorexic-looking stylist to the stars "credited" with starting the size-zero movement.
3. Angelina Jolie: Skinnier with every new child.
4. Victoria Beckham: Number one "thinspiration" role model on pro-anorexia websites (which promote anorexia as a lifestyle choice).
5. Mischa Barton: Admits she'd be "frightened" of having the voluptuous figure of her former 'The OC' co-star Rachel Bilson.
6. Nicole Ritchie: Actress and singer said, pre-pregnancy, to weigh just six stone.
7. Kate Bosworth: Once a glowing surf chick, now one of the " lollipop head brigade".
The culture
Books: 'Skinny Bitch' by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, 'How the Rich Get Thin' by Dr Jana Klauer, 'That Extra Half Inch' by Victoria Beckham.
Television: 'You are What You Eat' presented by ferociously sinewy Gillian McKeith
Holidays: The Mayr Clinic in Austria, for a fortnight of colonic irrigation, stale bread and starvation.
Food and drink: Luscious Organic, Kensington, one of Britain's only macrobiotic restaurants; Skinny Water – bottled water fortified with L-Carnitine and Chromium, said to aid weight loss.
The facts
Beat, the UK eating disorders charity, estimates there are 1.15 million people in Britain with eating disorders. According to the Department of Health, some 15 per cent of cases of anorexia result in death, caused mainly by suicide, and complications due to starvation. Being underweight raises risk of osteoporosis and brittle bones, heart attack, kidney failure and infertility.
'Size zero' is a equivalent to UK size 4 and a 22in waist.
Big Britain
The role models
1. Beth Ditto: Hefty rock singer and friend of Kate Moss who says she's never tried a Slim Fast in her life.
2. Lily Allen: Won legions of fans when she posted a video of herself crying on MySpace, saying she felt "a bit chubby".
3. Coleen McLoughlin: Wayne Rooney's fiancee proves an average girl with an average body can make millions.
4. Fern Britton: Self-confident size-16 TV presenter.
5. Kelly Osbourne: The singer and fashion designer who never outgrew her puppy fat.
6. Dawn French: Large-and -proud comedienne who is convinced she will shortly die (not,ironically, it seems from health-related problems)
7. Tyra Banks: once a supermodel, now proclaiming "Kiss my fat ass" on behalf of all plus-sized women.
The culture
Music: Mika's 'Big Girl (You are Beautiful)', Mutya Buena's 'Real Girl' and 'Ugly' by The Sugababes.
Books: 'Skinny Women are Evil', by Mo'Nique, 'Fat Chicks Rule!' by Lara Frater, 'Fat is a Feminist Issue' by Susie Orbach.
Films: 'Hairspray' (2007), in which "pleasantly plump" Tracy Turnblad proves weight is no obstacle to fame.
Art: Jenny Saville's oil paintings of curvaceous nudes.
The facts
A BMI (body mass index) of over 30 is referred to as obese, over 35 is known as morbid obesity, and over 40 indicates extreme obesity. Obesity is responsible for more than 9,000 premature deaths per year in England and increases risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers. A report by the World HealthOrganisation also suggests that health is compromised when waist measurement exceeds 94cm (37in) for men or 80cm (32in) for women. .
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