Letters: Obesity "obsession"

Obesity puts the health of the planet in danger

Sir: Dominic Lawson (9 November) pours scorn on the "unhealthy obsession" with obesity, as a report had just been published that appeared to show that being merely overweight (rather than obese) seemed to protect against premature death.

Raw mortality figures could easily obscure the true picture. For instance, patients with advanced cancer tend to lose weight. By the time they die their weight may be recorded as either normal or underweight, although they may have been overweight when the cancer first appeared.

The constant focus on obesity leads to a one-dimensional view of society's health problems. Obesity should be viewed as one disorder amongst a package of degenerative diseases which includes heart disease, cancers, high blood pressure and diabetes. A recent analysis of 7,000 high-quality studies found that the association between body weight and cancer was much stronger than was previously thought. Loss of excess weight is known to be highly effective for both hypertension and type II diabetes.

In most areas of rural China people are still generally thin, their cholesterol levels are, by Western standards, extraordinarily low, and coronary heart disease is rarely recorded as a cause of death. Their plant-based diet strongly protects them. If most of us switched to a more plant-based diet (I don't advocate complete avoidance of animal foods) this would extend huge benefits beyond our bodies and into the wider environment. A United Nations report published a year ago concluded that animal husbandry had a bigger influence on global warming than all of transportation around the globe.

Lawson says we can continue to party and there won't be any consequences worth worrying about. The consequences are already playing out in the public health arena, at huge cost. An even costlier environmental crisis is looming. I fear we'll discover too late that we can't buy our way out of that one either.

Dr Colin Walsh

General Practitioner, Cardiff

UK fails to speak out over Gaza

Sir: Johann Hari outlines perfectly the immorality and the futility of the Israeli policy towards Gaza, but omits the legal picture. ("Stop this strategy of strangulation", 8 November)

This Israeli policy is a war crime. They are using the starvation and strangulation of civilians under occupation as a method of warfare, and collective punishment, outlawed in the Rome statute as war crimes. It is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under Article 147, to wilfully cause "great suffering or serious injury to body or health".

The impact of cutting off or reducing fuel and electricity is that Gazans will be denied "objects indispensable" to their survival, not least water, which requires power to extract, clean, deliver and treat. Medical supplies have already been denied, while hospitals are also struggling.

Senior Israeli politicians such as the leader of the Likud party, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli Vice-Premier, Haim Ramon, have called for water and fuel to be cut off, itself incitement to a war crime, also covered by the Rome statute.

What is alarming is that the British government has so far only said that it is "deeply concerned" about the humanitarian situation. There has been no public condemnation of Israel whatsoever.

Chris Doyle

Director, Council for Arab-British Understanding, London EC4

Sir: I read Johann Hari's column with dismay and, while not wishing to diminish the suffering of the average, honest, hardworking Palestinian, feel very strongly the need to reply to some of his incredible arguments.

The Palestinians have allies, oil-rich allies, who, like Muslims the world over, claim the Palestinians as brothers and sisters in faith. So why are they not flooding the region with aid? Why are they not investing, encouraging enterprise, sponsoring education and health? Why are they not encouraging peaceful co-operation with Israel?

I understand that large amounts of UN money also goes into the region, so what is it being used for? How can its "government" afford weapons, yet cry out for sympathy over the poverty and suffering it oversees?

Are you so naive as to believe that organisations such as Hamas and its ilk would simply say thank you to Israel if it did return this land? Do you honestly think that they would then go about their daily business in peace? Of course they wouldn't. It would be claimed as a victory, another battle won in a long war in which the only outcome is the destruction of a sovereign state.

If The Independent is saying Israel has only itself to blame for the killing of Israelis by suicide bombers then it is only a small step further to claim that Britain is also to blame for the killing of British citizens by suicide bombers because the Government did not change its policies in accordance to the ever-changing demands of these extremists.

Terry Grimwood

Northwood, Middlesex

Punished twice for a crime in the past

Sir: Someone reading "Police ordered to destroy decades-old petty crime records" (1 November) could assume that simply having a criminal record flagged up on a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check automatically disbars the subject from clearance to work with young or vulnerable people. This should not and need not be the case.

In many instances, an independent external agency is used by organisations requiring a CRB check and it only recommends a person be disbarred if the offence is relevant to the job in hand. I would suggest that in the case quoted, the employers could have looked at the offence, the age when it was committed and the subsequent good character of your interviewee and made a judgement to employ her. The Information Commissioner certainly took that view in ordering the record to be expunged.

Not only should the workings of the Data Protection Act be looked at, but the way in which organisations deal with the information they receive from the CRB should be reviewed in order that people are not wrongly "punished again" for something that is well in the past.

David Taylor

Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire

Organic food is a lifestyle choice

Sir: Emily Dugan reported in her article "Organic food is healthier and safer" (29 October) a study that claimed higher levels of antioxidants, minerals and vitamins can be found in organic produce. Although these claims are purportedly new there are hundreds of such reports in scientific literature, though on average the increase of nutritional value is up 10-20 per cent rather than 40 per cent.

However, the article failed to mention that these small changes are dwarfed by the range of variation in minerals, vitamins and antioxidants in different varieties of fruit and vegetables. A range of 500-1,000 per cent is common in all the major vegetables and fruits. It is not difficult, if you have the information on composition, to select a cheaper conventional variety which is far more nutritious than a different, more expensive organic variety adjacent to it.

Synthetic pesticide traces are not absent from organic produce but the amounts consumed in all fruits and vegetables, organic or conventional, are again dwarfed by the enormous excess of natural pesticides in these foods. The toxicology of natural and synthetic pesticides is identical.

Miliband was correct: organic is a lifestyle choice.

Professor Anthony Trewavas FRS

Institute of Molecular Plant Science, Edinburgh

Why diplomats talk to asylum-seekers

Sir: Ben Russell levels grave accusations at our Embassy ("Sudanese officials 'were allowed to interview Darfuri refugees in the UK' ", 5 November). The Sudan has very good relations with the UK and is grateful for its positive attitudes regarding debt relief, support for peace and humanitarian aid.

Many asylum-seekers in the UK (who have no passports or travel documents or identification) claim to be from Darfur in order to improve their chances at the Home Office. We are not in a position to make any statement about their lack of identification.

When the Home Office approaches us to issue passports for those whose applications are rejected, we need to make sure that they are indeed Sudanese. This is a standard procedure.

Our staff face abuse, intimidation and – in some cases – physical violence in the line of duty. They never threaten while trying to establish whether someone deserves to be given a passport or not. We cannot be expected to issue hundreds of passports without verification.

Dr Khalid Al Mubarak

Media Counsellor, Embassy of Sudan, London SW1

Backing another 'Shah' in Pakistan

Sir: When will President Bush and Prime Minister Brown learn from past mistakes in supporting dictators? When the British and American governments backed the Shah in Iran, they managed to discredit secular government as foreign-backed dictatorship, resulting in the rise to power of Khomeini's Islamic fundamentalist government.

Musharraf's military dictatorship in Pakistan is not a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism either. It's doing the same in Pakistan as the Shah's regime did in Iran. The military aid being poured into Pakistan is stoking the fires of Islamic fundamentalism, when the one thing capable of defeating it is democracy.

Duncan McFarlane

Carluke, South Lanarkshire

Can autistic people ever be 'cured'?

Sir: Sally Eva and others (letter, 8 November) demand that "the National Autistic Society rescind its latest leaflet ('Think Differently about Autism') calling for public understanding of autism, complete with a website of supportive celebs".

As an employee of the NAS, working both at head office and teaching meditation to Autistics in Acton, I feel I hardly need comment on the sheer lunacy of their demand to end a campaign to promote and improve the lives of the very kinds of people they have as children. Of course, the writers of the letter are not on the autistic spectrum. I am.

We in the global and British autistic communities, both online and in person, have seen a sharp rise in this sort of behaviour in "neurotypical" parents. They don't actually have the condition, but are often desperate to believe their children will one day be like them. Like the drowning, they clutch at anything.

Reports of research in America seem to say that nature can be changed. The brain can be altered. Genetics and chromosomes can be "cured" to be the way they want them to be. Let us have respect for the love and care that motivates such people. However, as so many of us on and off the spectrum believe, time will tell.

Paul Wady

Ilford, Essex

Sir: No one suggests diseases such as diabetes and cancer are to be welcomed and embraced. Initiatives to eliminate the disease are not campaigns against the suffering victims.

Autism is a disorder, it is not a person. My son is happier when he is free of his autistic symptoms and participating with other children in school, sports and play. Every time autism causes a child to be unable to participate in typical endeavours of childhood, it is a shame. Eliminating this disorder from our population would be a very good thing.

Those seeking to blur the line between fighting the disorder and accepting children victimised by it are doing harm to everyone. Dominion over autistic disorder and elimination of this destructive influence is not inconsistent with loving persons diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

Doreen Carlson

Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA

Sir: As someone who is mildly autistic, I have followed the recent letters on the subject of the NAS with interest. I have not been "cured" of autism and have no desire to be "cured". However, the NAS has provided me, and many like me, with the support and services to lead a happy and fulfilling life and enable us to cope with the condition. Demanding the withdrawal of public understanding or implying that we are of low intelligence and poor health does not help our cause.

Haywood Drake

Guildford, Surrey

Briefly...

Police who lied

Sir: Does anyone else think there is a need to look into any or all of the former convictions made as a result of testimony given by the police officers who were so quick to lie in the aftermath of the Menezes shooting?

Greg Jarvis

Enfield, Middlesex

Bonuses for risk-taking

Sir: Now that many of the City banks are being hit by ever-increasing debt write-downs caused by their over-enthusiastic engagement in many dubious business practices, can we assume that the executives of these banks will be paying back their bonuses of the past three years, as it is obvious now that many of these practices were nothing more than phoney wealth-creation schemes for those who had been placed in positions of trust.

Steve Brickle

Biarritz, France

Brown in white tie

Sir: For the past 10 years, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown rudely refused to wear white tie for banquets. Now that he is Prime Minister he has suddenly conformed. What has caused this? Has he been ticked off? No matter: our stubborn Scottish Prime Minister, he of the clunking fist (or should that be the limp and trembling wrist) will never change within. Just imagine, another five, possibly seven years of "Peacock" Brown. Lord help us.

A R W Davies

Carmarthen

Far-away place names

Sir: Further to Errors & Omissions (10 November), on the gradual disappearance of traditional English names for foreign places (such as "Peking"), it is worth adding that this phenomenon seems to be largely confined to English. Other European languages are much less inclined to bring in "correct" forms of foreign place names. For example, China's capital is known as "Pékin" in French, "Pechino" in Italian, and "Peking" in Dutch and German. And, of course, London is known in French as "Londres". Gee, I'm so insulted.

Alex Macfie

Oxford

Music of Leeds

Sir: Don't forget the White Rosettes in your musical highlights of Leeds (13 November). Those delectable dames have once again won gold as the country's best ladies' barbershop chorus.

Gordon Skilling

Guildford, Surrey

191 Marsh WaLl, London E14 9RS, email: letters@independent.co.uk (No Attachments please), fax: 020 7005 2056. Please include your full street address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited