Brazil transfixed by 4th anorexia deathThu, 28 Dec 2006 03:13:50 GMTBy PETER MUELLO, Associated Press Writer RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - The struggle for food has long been a drama for millions of impoverished Brazilians. But these days the nation is transfixed by another sort of starvation: anorexia among the successful and well off. The deaths of four young women in recent weeks from anorexia — a disorder characterized by an abnormal fear of becoming obese, an aversion to food and severe weight loss — have been splashed across the front pages of newspapers nationwide. The subject has become a morbid fascination for Brazilians, and is even the theme of a popular TV soap opera. It has also touched off a debate within Brazil's fashion industry that has long presented the rail-thin model as the paragon of female beauty. The most recent victim was Beatriz Cristina Ferraz Lopes Bastos, a 23-year-old teacher whose death Sunday at a hospital in Jau, 200 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, was reported by national television news programs. Local media reports said she was 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed just 77 pounds. "Another victim of anorexia," the newspaper Globo said on its Web site Tuesday, alongside a glamorous photo of the blonde Bastos, who was also a skilled pianist, amateur historian and author of a literature column for a hometown Web site. The newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported she described herself as "thin" on an Internet discussion group and friends said they had to "fight with her to eat." A former boyfriend, Leandro Murgo, told reporters Bastos was a chubby teenager and became fixated on losing weight. Anorexia became big news in Brazil last month with the death of 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston, a successful model who died of generalized infection caused by anorexia nervosa. She reportedly carried just 88 pounds on her 5-foot-8 frame. "Take care for your children because their loss is irreparable," Reston's mother, Miriam, told Globo after her death. "Nothing can make the pain go away. No money in the world is worth the life of your child." Two days later, on Nov. 16, college student Carla Sobrado Casalle, 21, died in the southeastern city of Araraquara, also with symptoms linked to anorexia. She was just under 5-foot-9 and weighed 99 pounds. A third anorexia victim died later in the month. Eating disorders are also a daily subject for viewers of the prime-time soap opera "The Pages of Our Lives," in which a 15-year-old ballet dancer suffers from bulimia, secretly making herself vomit after eating to keep her weight down. Death and illness from malnourishment is not uncommon in this nation of 185 million people, where 26.5 million must survive on the minimum wage of $160 a month or less. According to the IBGE Census Institute, at least 8 percent of Brazilians are underweight. As it has in other countries, the attention on eating disorders is renewing pressures on Brazil's fashion industry, whose officials insist they do not urge models to starve themselves to attain an "ideal" body. They noted a fashion show in Sao Paulo already had said it would bar models under age 16 as part of a national effort to raise awareness about eating disorders. "In Paris and Milan, models under 16 years can't participate in these types of events," said Paula Marini, a spokeswoman for the Ford Models agency. "In Brazil, this is a new procedure." Europeans also have stepped up their attention to the sometimes unhealthy aspects of fashionable looks. Organizers of Madrid's Fashion Week, for instance, announced in September that they was banning overly thin models. Organizers of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, held every year in late January, added the minimum-age requirement to a previous rule requiring that agencies present a signed medical certificate attesting that their models are in good health. "Beauty and fashion is about health in the first place," the creative director of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, Paulo Borges, said in a statement in July. Mental health bill to face House voteThu, 28 Dec 2006 08:50:03 GMTBy FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - After years of trying, advocates think they have a good chance of getting Congress to pass legislation next year that would require equal health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses, if their policies include both. The legislation, named for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, a Minnesota Democrat who championed the cause, has strong support in Congress but has run into GOP roadblocks. In the last congressional session, 231 House members — more than half of the chamber — signed on as co-sponsors. The GOP leadership, which in the past had expressed concern that the proposal would drive up health insurance premiums, wouldn't bring it up for a vote. In 2003, Senate Democrats tried to win passage of the bill as a tribute to Wellstone, who died in a plane crash the previous year. Republicans blocked an attempt to pass it by unanimous consent. "I'm very optimistic that 2007 will finally be the year that our health care system recognizes that the brain is, in fact, a part of the body," said Rep. Patrick Kennedy , a Rhode Island Democrat who sponsored the bill in the last Congress. "We've had majority support for this legislation six years in a row, and now we have a chance to bring it to the floor and pass it." Kennedy has worked to erase the stigma of depression and other mental health problems. He has been candid about his own mental health, including being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he has won praise for speaking publicly about suffering from depression since his teenage years, taking antidepressant medication and regularly seeing a psychiatrist. He has also acknowledged being in recovery for alcoholism and substance abuse. Kennedy's lead co-sponsor, Minnesota Republican Jim Ramstad, said a "silver lining" to the Democrats winning both houses of Congress is the increased chances of passing the bill, known as mental health parity. "The Republican leadership would not give us a vote," said Ramstad, a recovering alcoholic who has pushed for improved treatment for those with alcohol and drug dependency. Ramstad said that incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has told him the bill will come up for a vote on the House floor, which Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly confirmed. "We need to deal as a nation with America's No. 1 health problem," Ramstad said. "It's not only the right thing to do, but the cost-effective thing do." Prospects have also improved in the Senate. Incoming Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is a big backer of mental health parity, as is Kennedy's father, Massachusetts Democrat Edward M. Kennedy, who will chair the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee next year. Sen. Pete Domenici , R-N.M., who worked with Wellstone on the legislation, called the bill one of his top priorities in the next Congress. A 1996 law already prohibits health plans that offer mental health coverage from setting lower annual and lifetime spending limits for mental treatments than for physical ailments. But backers want to see that expanded to things like co-payments, deductibles and limits on doctor visits. Mohit M. Ghose, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, said that the trade group hopes to tackle the country's challenge of providing coverage to the uninsured in the next Congress. "To accomplish this goal, we believe that consumers and employers must have the ability to choose the type of health care coverage they can afford and that most suits their needs," he said. "We hope that any discussion of mental health and other health care legislation will occur in this context next year." J.P. Fielder, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, said his group doesn't support "additional mandates to health care coverage that will drive up these costs to employers." He declined to say whether he considered this bill to be a mandate, saying the group was still reviewing issues that will come up in the next Congress. Andrew Sperling, a lobbyist for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, said the bill was not a mandate because it doesn't require insurance plans to provide mental health coverage. "We don't want to get in the trap of making this a mandate," he said. "We believe this is a coverage condition." He added: "We believe the brain is an organ like any other, and coverage should be equitable. Treatment is effective." David L. Shern, president and CEO of Mental Health America , said cost should not be a concern. He pointed to a study this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found that the government's decision to provide parity to federal employees in their health insurance plans did not drive up the cost of mental health care. "I'm hoping we have nailed all of the concerns," Shern said. "It's the right thing to do, we have the data that says it's affordable, so our hope is this will be the year to set this benchmark nationally." Too much fish risky for fetuses Taiwan studyThu, 28 Dec 2006 08:36:35 GMTHONG KONG - Pregnant women who eat fish more than three times a week could be putting their baby at risk because of higher mercury levels in their blood, according to a study by Taiwanese researchers. Mercury exposure is especially risky for fetuses when their internal organs are developing, and can result in neuronal, kidney and brain damage, and stunt growth. Expectant Chinese mothers tend to eat more fish as they believe it is healthier than red or white meat. A study of 65 pregnant women in Taipei found mercury concentrations of around 9.1 micrograms per liter in their blood and around 10 micrograms per liter in blood in their umbilical cords. The researchers also found an average of 19 nanograms per gram of mercury in their placenta. Such levels were way over what are considered safe, the researchers wrote in a paper to be published in January in the International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Eighty-nine percent had blood mercury concentrations exceeding the US National Research Council's recommended value of 5.8 micrograms per liter. The women were recruited for the study 24 weeks into their pregnancy. "When a woman consumes fish, it is absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract and enters the bloodstream. The trace elements of mercury, or methylmercury, the commonly found form of mercury in fish, passes through the placenta and then to the fetus," the researchers said. The US Food and Drug Administration advises pregnant women to avoid eating fish with high mercury levels such as shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish. Instead, it recommends fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury, such as shrimp and tilapia. |
