Too scared to say the F-word?

The government is planning new measures to tackle the growing crisis that is childhood obesity. With 18 per cent of UK children now overweight or obese, and a fat child generally becoming and staying a fat adult, this is surely a positive step. However, has the government reduced the potential impact of its measures by refusing to use the words ‘fat’ and ‘obese’ in its campaign, deeming them likely to ‘stigmatise’ children?

The National Obesity Forum has condemned this decision as “prissy and namby pamby” and other experts in the field back this up. Professor Gately, who has run the Carnegie Weight Management Residential Camp for children, a six week nutrition and sports heavy boot camp for obese children near Leeds, for the last 9 years with a 75 per cent success rate, faces constant accusations that the camp stigmatises overweight children. But he has this to say: “These kids get picked on every day of their lives. They are obese, it’s a fact, there’s no point trying to dress it up.”

Is it possible that our society’s ever increasing refusal to call a spade a spade is actually contributing to the obesity epidemic in the first place? As David Cameron said the other week, you don’t ‘catch’ obesity. Most overweight people are not victims of a sustained attack by cream buns they valiantly tried to fight off. While a few are overweight because of medical or psychological conditions, many of us, to put it in its simplest form, expend too little energy and eat too much, often of the wrong types of food. As individuals we have to take some responsibility for our size, and using words that accurately describe the condition makes things clearer for the 68 per cent of us UK adults considered to be overweight.

Which actually makes words like ‘fat’ and ‘obese’ empowering, not stigmatising. Pick up a copy of Pocket Issue Fat for more on fat facts and solutions, and get onto the problem today.

Bad Education

It recently emerged that six of the UK’s biggest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have made agreements with the BPI, the UK record industry’s trade association, to monitor, warn, and possibly ban customers who fileshare illegally. A Virgin press release earlier this month described it as "a new education campaign". The ISPs involved; BSkyB, BT, Carphone Warehouse, Orange, Tiscali and Virgin, altogether provide around 90% of the UK’s broadband connections, so this is no small shift in the debate around internet privacy.

As Charles Arthur of the Guardian discusses, the BPI plan is to first find the IP addresses of users illegally filesharing. They then contact these users’ ISPs, who are in turn obliged to send written warnings to the user, suspend their account if they are caught by the BPI a second time, and cancel their contract if they are caught a third time.

So do the BPI agreements with ISPs mark a decisive step down an unappealing road that will erode individual privacy on the net, and as this piece suggests, could lead to multitudes of ‘false positives’ – people mistakenly identified and punished as illegal filesharers?

The answer would have to be a qualified ‘no’. Merely identifying IP addresses does not reveal personal data, and the BPI will not request personal customer information from ISPs. The BPI also state that they will search for copyright violations by finding files shared relating to their own clients – which should ensure prying eyes stay well away from your holiday photos.

However, these agreements open up the field for wider collaboration between ISPs and third parties. Given the possibilities for evading blame presented to determined and unwitting users alike – Wi-Fi’s insecurity, shared connections, dynamic IP addresses, it is likely that the BPI and other trade groups will push ISPs to take more effective action to target filesharers. This would open the way for more intrusive blanket procedures such as checking users’ data packets for illegal activity.

We have previously talked about the availability of the necessary technology and the UK government’s support for such measures, so these BPI-ISP agreements, tame as they are, point to more worrying trends. We’ll be taking a closer look at the impact of government, corporate interest, and ever-developing technologies of surveillance on individual privacy in our forthcoming Pocket Issue: Big Brother.

Jerusalem - keeping a fragile peace?

On the 2nd July a Palestinian man seized control of a bulldozer, killed three people and injured dozens in Jerusalem before being shot dead. Israeli police believe the attacker was acting alone – in spite of the efforts of at least three Palestinian militant groups to claim responsibility.

There are fears amongst many commentators that this will cast a shadow over the fragile truce that holds between Israel and Hamas, the Islamists who fought their more moderate rivals Fatah out of Gaza last summer. The Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Hamas and Israel has now held for two weeks, and there are signs of wider diplomatic movement – indirect peace talks have at last been taking place between Israel and Syria.

However, the temptation, fuelled by politicians from the Israeli right, is to regard events like Wednesday's as the natural outcome of negotiating with the enemy. Arieh Eldad of the National Union said that the attack was the product of “a policy of restraint and immoral dealings with terrorist organisations”. New security measures are likely, further restricting Palestinian movement in Jerusalem at a time when thousands of Palestinians are working on construction sites across the city.

Hamas’ official response to the attack argued that it was “a natural result of the continuation of the Israeli aggression against our people”. While their refusal to condemn the murders jars, it is also to be expected. As we discuss in depth in Pocket Issue: The Middle East Conflict, Hamas’ persistent intransigence and hostility, moral blame aside, is inseparable from Israeli policy.

Hamas’ hostile rhetoric will be difficult for moderate Israeli politicians to deal with in the face of an angry Israeli public. But calls for more far-reaching retaliation would be counter-productive at a time when any encouragement to Hamas to break the truce should be avoided.

It is unlikely that the bulldozer attack alone will lead to the unraveling of recent progress. But it serves as a chilling reminder of the fragility of such gains, and how easily they can be reversed.

Holiday diar-y

Some 170 people are suing a travel company after their luxury holiday turned into a nightmare because of a stomach bug, on the Egyptian Riviera. Guests began to fall ill within days of checking in to the five star hotel on the Egyptian Riviera, with vomiting and diarrhoea lasting days. And this is far from the first time tales of a holiday turned hideous have hit the headlines. The Queen Victoria, the luxury cruise liner launched by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, in 2007, had 80 passengers felled by a stomach bug on one of its early voyages.

The holiday season is just getting into its stride, but densely populated holiday populations such as those found on cruise ships or at resort hotels are particularly vulnerable to a rogue bug spreading like wildfire. So is there anything you can do to make sure your holiday highlights don’t include a visit to the local A and E?

As with all illnesses, the first line of defence is prevention. And this begins with washing your hands – a lot. As Pocket Issue Pandemics, which deals with everything from Bird flu to MRSA, advises ‘Think Lady Macbeth. Wash your hands a lot and especially before eating’. Other Pocket Issue advice includes carrying a handkerchief or tissue at all times and sneezing into it; if everyone did this, a primary source of germs transmission would be foiled; and look after skin wounds, however small they may seem. It’s important to keep them clean.

With stomach related troubles being one of the most common mishaps abroad, usually from contact with contaminated food or water, there are a number of sensible dietary precautions travellers can take. A look at the Department of Health website will give comprehensive travel advice, including the following: Drink bottled or boiled water if the tap water is not safe; Don’t have ice in your drink unless you know it is made from treated water; Make sure food is fresh and thoroughly cooked; avoid uncooked food; avoid food that has been exposed to flies and avoid ice cream from unreliable sources.

Pandemic prevention - a solution in sight?

Developments in possible pandemic prevention are currently making the news. This week, drug manufacturer Glaxo Smith-Kline became the first to be granted approval of its pre-pandemic influenza vaccine. The vaccine, called Prepandrix, uses the current H5N1 influenza virus, otherwise known as bird flu. This strain, which to date has affected birds and humans who live and work closely with birds, has caused much concern, over its possible mutation to allow human to human transmission. Health officials have repeatedly warned that if this happens, a bird flu pandemic is highly likely. The European Commission has approved Prepandrix for use in all 27 EU member states.

So how will the new vaccine work? Like a typical flu jab, it will be given as a preventative measure. The vaccine, containing a blended dose of existing H5N1 strains from Vietnam and Indonesia, will ‘teach’ the human immune system to recognise the virus and fight it off. It is apparently flexible, so should still prove effective if the virus mutates slightly. GSK has donated 50 million doses of Prepandrix to the World Health Organisation, and will be offering it at a “much reduced” price to all developing nations.

Meanwhile, MRSA, the hospital superbug, has also been in the headlines. A British company called Destiny Pharma has developed a drug, codenamed XF-73, which has proved effective against the bacteria in initial trials. The drug is placed as a gel in the nose, interacting lethally with the bacteria’s cell membrane, giving bugs less opportunity to develop and infiltrate a patient’s bloodstream. However, the latest figures from the Health protection Agency show that drops in the number of MRSA infections appear to have stalled.

You can read up on the facts and stats behind bird flu, MRSA and how pandemics spread in our pocket guide - Pocket Issue, Pandemics: Bird flu, MRSA - do we need to worry?