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French pro-anorexia sites soon to be history

From the Nextweb folks.

 

Interesting law, don’t know where French law stands of free speech, though. This caught my eye, though. “’In France, we know how to punish, we know how to treat, but we don’t seem to know much about prevention,’ said psychiatrist Sophie Criquillion-Doublet to AFP.” The same can be said for the US, as well as any government that I’m familiar with. Basically, there are limits to society’s effectiveness in controlling the behavior of individuals, thus policy is always a blunt instrument. It does pose an interesting question about how a government, and by extrapolation, society, control the destructive behaviors of its dysfunctional individuals. Is there any other method besides coercion? How much of an investment is considered worthwhile? Where do we draw the line? Do we want to have a society full of like-minded borgs?

 

Comments

Aaron Burkhalter said…
Anorexia is difficult in terms of prevention. A psychology department did a study at a school, offering anorexia-awareness classes and public displays in and around college dormitories. The dormitories with the programs showed an INCREASE of students with anorexia after the programs.

The awareness, they found out, mainly puts the idea in the heads of students who might consider not eating to lose weight.

What we need is not prevention as much as societal shifts in how we treat women in terms of body image. Which, y'know, changing the perspective of society is SO easy this should be a breeze!
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Carl said…
Prevention is problematic for all our society's issues, I'm afraid. I concur with your assessment about societal shifts. Of course, the larger question of making that work is where the problem is.
Friday, April 25, 2008
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