Internet Life

Pro-Anorexia Websites to Become Illegal

In France

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

15th of April 2008, 20:21 GMT

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Anorexia is quite an important problem in France

Because more and more girls are tempted to step into the pro-anorexia side, the French government tries to stop the phenomenon by promoting new laws that

would reduce the number of websites encouraging this matter. According to Reuters, the pages or blogs supporting anorexia may get two years in jail and a fine of approximately 30,000 for the so-called "incitement to excessive thinness by publicising of any kind." Moreover, the sentence could be expanded to three years in prison in case someone dies due to the advises or methods described on the website.

"Giving young girls advice about how to lie to their doctors, telling them what kinds of food are easiest to vomit, encouraging them to torture themselves whenever they take any kind of food is not part of liberty of expression," Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said according to Reuters. "The messages sent out here are messages of death. Our country should have the means of finding and prosecuting those behind sites like this."

According to the same source, the official said that France hosts no less than 40,000 anorexics, 90 percent of them being teenagers and young women.

Anorexia is an important problem, not only in France, but also in other European countries because more and more women, especially young ones and teens, choose to starve themselves in order to look like their favorite super model or just because they consider that looking thin (extremely, I would say) is a thing to be proud of.

What's worse is that some people suffering of anorexia even die and the number of victims is not quite low if you have a look on the statistics of any country in the world. For instance, an article published on Wikipedia states that six percent of the total persons diagnosed with anorexia died, although there are several methods to threat this disorder.

TAGS:

france | anorexia | prison | law

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