Weight crime

Up till now the horror of anorexia has been tackled through model agencies, magazines, TV companies and businesses agreeing not to promote stick-thin, underweight women. But now France is going a stage farther and making such quasi-anorexic images illegal.

The new law, currently going through parliament, will make it a criminal offence to encourage extreme thinness that could lead to ill-health or death. The penalty is two years' jail or a £24,000 fine.

Up to 40,000 people in France could be anorexic, and the cult of super-slimness is widespread. Pro-anorexia websites give young girls advice on lying to their doctors, foods that are easy to vomit, and punishing themselves for eating. Clearly action is needed.

But my question is, will this new law achieve its aims? It sounds all right in theory, but actually proving an offence could be tricky. Just how do you distinguish between a photo of a naturally thin woman, used because it appeals to readers, and the active encouragement of pro-starvation lifestyles?

Fairly straightforward with explicitly pro-anorexia websites, but less so with the ambiguous, run-of-the-mill images the media are full of. Are they just examples of fetching prettiness or are they supporting something more unhealthy? It's hard to say.

I'm reminded of the now discredited English law against 'promoting' homosexuality, which rapidly collapsed because it was impossible to define what was meant by promotion. Did school textbooks featuring gay heroes come under this heading or did you have to be busily seducing young Johnny behind the bike sheds? Confusion reigned and teachers became paranoid.

I suspect this well-intentioned measure could soon turn into a tangled morass. Which would be a shame when it's aimed at such a truly alarming phenomenon.

Sicko

I've often criticised the National Health Service, but after seeing Michael Moore's film Sicko I'm bloody glad I have the NHS and not the horrific set-up that exists in America.

In the USA, 50 million people have no medical insurance whatever and those who do are frequently refused treatment for all sorts of bogus reasons, as the insurance companies make higher profits by denying as many claims as possible.

The idea of free universal health care is seen by the country's leaders as a communist conspiracy that threatens democratic freedoms and civilised values.

But what a payment-based system produces is thousands of people dying needlessly, a greatly increased risk of serious illness and shorter lifespans. Not to mention widespread debt, despair and destitution.

Moore interviews a middle-class couple who had high-earning jobs but ran up such heavy debts after heart attacks and cancer they had to sell their home and move into their daughter's spare room.

He shows video footage of a woman unable to pay for hospital treatment who was removed from the hospital by the insurance company and dumped on a city street.

A man who sliced off two fingertips on a circular saw was told an operation to sew back one fingertip would cost $60,000.

People with terminal illnesses needing vital treatments are refused payment on the grounds that the treatments are experimental, ineffective or inappropriate. Or that it was a pre-existing condition that invalidates the insurance.

Moore travels to Canada, the UK, France and Cuba, where he is gobsmacked by the high-quality care available to any citizen for free, simply to improve their quality of life.

You could describe the USA's health chaos as third-world standard, except that many third-world countries have far superior (and free) health services.

It's a shocking and shameful film, which I hope humiliates the USA right across the globe. Go see it.

Photo: Michael Moore interviews an NHS doctor