News - Egyptians tackle taboos through net
Posted on August 31, 2007
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The massive boom in internet use in Egypt has been hailed by both business and government, but looks set to have far-reaching repercussions on the country’s society.
Despite having been officially in a state of emergency for 22 years, with restrictions on press freedom and public gatherings, Egypt has rapidly been emerging as the home of one of the most open internet cultures in the Middle East.
Some 2.5 million Egyptians are registered as online users, with many more crowding the cyber cafes that are springing up throughout the country’s cities.
Some estimate that Egypt’s unofficial pool of internet users has now grown to about six million.
“Fifty-one percent of our population is less than 20-years-old, so by default this is the internet generation,” Egypt’s former information technology minister Dr Rafart Radwan told BBC World Service’s Analysis programme.
“Those kids are becoming internet maniacs. They need to sit by the internet most of the time,” said the minister, who first pioneered internet use in Egypt eight years ago.
“Looking at my kids, looking at the internet cafes, looking to kids’ clubs right now, I believe the internet is going to reshape the Egyptian economy in the next five years.”
Social changes
The positive impact on Egypt’s economy is already being felt in some areas, with business leaders saying the country is in a great position to attract foreign investors.
The net is promoting debate over what is acceptable and what is not
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The boom is the result of a massive government effort towards expanding the internet. It has provided free access, made computers cheaper to buy, installed them in every school and given encouragement to private internet providers.
But the web is also changing Egyptians’ personal lives, putting pressure on traditional social and political boundaries.
The most widely read section of one of the most popular sites, Islam Online, is a problem page which allows Egyptians and others in the Arab world to seek advice in the public arena.
“We have adolescent problems, pre- and post-marital problems, psychological problems, sexual problems,” said Ahmad, the co-founder of Islam Online who runs the problem page.
“This page is shocking for the first time, because we still have stigma.
“If you have a social or sexual problem, professionally or privately you can go to the sheikh or the psychiatrist. But on a collective level, for all audiences and all users to see the problem and the answer, is something new.”
Ahmad added that he receives about 400 e-mails every week, in which people talk frankly about issues such as homosexuality, impotence and divorce.
But these new cyberspaces are throwing up fresh problems for Muslims.
“There is a debate amongst Islamic scholars. Should they prevent or should they allow relations on the internet?,” Ahmad said.
“It is a complex, new situation.
“We have a rule that a man and woman shouldn’t stay alone together in a closed space. So is the internet a closed space? Is it private or public? This is one of the main questions.”
Islamist groups
It is not just Egypt’s sexual boundaries that are being pushed back either. Political groups are also benefiting from the ability to give unrestricted information to the country’s population.
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 The internet is still used by what we call above-standard Egyptians
Dr Rafart Radwan, former information technology minister
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Opposition groups who have had publications closed and activities restricted are finding a new freedom of expression online.
The banned Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main opposition, is among these.
“The internet is very important, especially as the government has no control over who informs a person,” said the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood website.
“The government is not happy.”
But Dr Radwan, who now heads the cabinet advisory body on the internet, said that though the presence of all kinds of Islamist groups online is outstripping others, he felt the internet was not going to radicalise many users.
“The internet is still used by what we call above-standard Egyptians,” he said.
“The Islamic movement in Egypt is highly tied to the economic situation.”
Internet police
But some Egyptians argue that internet access is not as free as it would seem.
“It’s clear now that there is a specialised unit, an internet police, in Egypt,” said Gamal Aieed, human rights lawyer based in Cairo.
Homosexuality is at the heart of the debate on internet use
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He said that Egypt’s police had a way of “handling” internet cafes.
“The police officer who is in charge of the area in which the cafe is operating usually acquires from the cafe managers photocopied IDs from the users.
“They also identify certain pages that are surfed that related to certain political issues, religious issues, as well as sexual issues, especially homosexual sites.”
Many in Egypt’s close-knit gay community believe it was their use of the internet that caused the authorities to clamp down.
One gay man, Mohammed, alleged that he arranged to meet a “foreign tourist” over the internet, but when he turned up he was instead met by a number of policemen, who assaulted him before imprisoning him for 15 days.
Having committed to the internet and the prosperity it brings, Egypt’s main challenge will be to deal with the cultural and social impact on a generation.
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Doctor sold useless sex creams
Posted on August 30, 2007
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A Harley Street doctor prescribed expensive impotence remedies which were useless if not dangerous, a GMC disciplinary hearing has been told.
Dr Moloy Prakash Sahu of the Wellman Clinic, 57 Harley Street, gave creams and pills which had "no evidence" of treating sexual problems, it heard.
He failed to check medical histories or possible psychological problems, said expert witness Laurence Sandler.
Dr Sahu denies serious professional misconduct. The hearing continues.
Mr Sandler, of Wycombe General Hospital, said he had examined patient records and notes made by Dr Sahu and could not understand the drugs and other preparations that had been prescribed.
He noted Dr Sahu had spent little time talking through the sex problems of his patients before prescribing.
"I spend a long time talking to them. It is very difficult but you have to get a rapport with them. It is a very sensitive problem," said Mr Sandler.
Psychological factors
Mr Sandler said the cause of low libido was often psychological, or caused by factors such as high blood pressure, smoking and drinking.
But Dr Sahu had failed to discuss this in detail with the patients, he said.
 There was an average of a three month course of treatment made up of vitamins and washes for each man and the cost would be in the region of 1,500 to 2,000  Lynn Griffin, for the GMC
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Mr Sandler also warned about Dr Sahu's prescriptions for the sex drug Viagra.
"There is a significant failure rate. It isn't a catch-all. It doesn't work all the time."
The hearing was held after three patients at the clinic, which charges up to 2,000 a time for treatment, complained to the GMC.
Earlier, it was told that one patient who complained that a 12 week course of treatment had failed to work was "flabbergasted" by an invitation to sign up for another course.
Another was prescribed a drug which, mixed with an anti-depression drug he was already taking, could have proved fatal.
That patient was also treated for a condition he did not suffer.
'True purpose'
Lynn Griffin, for the GMC, said Dr Sahu targeted "vulnerable men" suffering impotence problems to earn "ridiculous amounts of money".
She said the doctor's "deference" to non-medically qualified members of the clinic's staff illustrated the "true purpose" of the establishment.
That "was to get vulnerable men to part with money for treatment which was not effective and certainly overpriced," she said.
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This clinic appears to have a standard form of treatment which is meted out regardless of the condition presented by the patient Lynn Griffin
GMC |
Dr Sahu prescribed a range of vitamins, herbal washes, creams and other drugs which were on the whole "inappropriate", she said.
Often his contact with patients was "minimal", while other staff persuaded them to sign up for treatments.
Ms Griffin also said the price of the treatments appeared excessive.
"There was an average of a three month course of treatment made up of vitamins and washes for each man and the cost would be in the region of 1,500 to 2,000," she said.
Charges denied
She said despite each patient suffering a range of problems, the men were given similar treatment.
"This clinic appears to have a standard form of treatment which is meted out regardless of the condition presented by the patient.
"For most patients the prescribing was inappropriate - the drugs would have been ineffective and no matter how many washes and creams were given to these gentlemen along with these medications it would not have assisted their problem," said Ms Griffin.
One patient told the hearing the clinic had since paid the costs of his treatment, plus interest, as a result of a small claims court ruling.
Dr Sahu, of Walthamstow, East London, denies 11 charges amounting to serious professional misconduct, arising from his treatment of patients at the clinic between July 2000 and June 2001.
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News - Norwegian wood rocks election campaign
Posted on August 29, 2007
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A relatively minor industrial reshuffle, at least by international standards, has caused major political waves ahead of Norway’s general election on 12 September.
A mighty row has broken out following a recent decision by one of the world’s largest producer of fine quality paper, Norske Skog, to slash 380 jobs and close one of its four paper factories in Norway, even though the plant is profitable.
Each of the politicians appears desperate either to gain political currency from the affair, or at least to not come across as if they do not care about the loss of jobs.
But beyond a great deal of hand wringing, which has led some commentators to suggest they are deliberately failing to grasp the commercial arguments behind Norske Skog’s decision in the run-up to the election, the affair has simply demonstrated the politicians’ impotence in the face of Norske Skog’s decision.
Norske Skog is sticking to its guns, insisting the factory must close due to overcapacity in the group’s European operations.
Necessary step
Chief executive Jan Oksum has even rejected offers of fresh financial incentives to keep the factory in Skien alive, having dismissed them as pre-election promises.
Norske Skog has also dismissed assertions by politicians across the spectrum that previously received indirect state support, such as favourably priced electricity for its factories, means it is indebted to Norwegian society and thus has a duty to safeguard jobs.
What is important, insists Mr Oksum, is to make sure Norske Skog remains a profitable company.
“The imbalance between demand and capacity in the European market is lasting,” Mr Oksum wrote in a letter published by the newspaper Aftenposten. “We must therefore find a permanent solution.
“I wouldn’t have subjected our employees and the company to this unless I was convinced that a closure of the mill is needed to strengthen Norske Skog and safeguard more than 6,000 jobs worldwide,” he insists.
Indeed, Norske Skog’s finances have weakened dramatically in recent years: Last year’s 210m Norwegian kroner earnings compared poorly with the near NKr4bn it made in 2001.
“We have a responsibility to reverse this trend, and must act before our results deteriorate further,” explains Mr Oksum, insisting that the factory closure and plans to shift some of the production to its other factories should shave NKr200m off its costs.
Media backlash
But regardless of whether or not there is solid industrial logic behind Norske Skog’s decision, its announcement seems particularly ill timed.
Mr Oksum is refusing to sell the paper factory
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Although Norway’s politicians lack formal powers to prevent the factory’s closure, their ability to whip up bad publicity has proven to be great.
Little more than one in 10 newspaper articles that have been written about the affair put the company in a good light, and most of those were published by specialist financial media, according to a survey.
Norske Skog’s insists this is because there are so many temporary workers in the newsrooms during summer, though there are clearly other reasons too.
One is the involvement of the flamboyant celebrity investors Petter Stordalen and Oystein Stray Spetalen who have thrown their hats into the ring with a NKr100m offer to acquire the doomed factory.
Their bid was immediately rejected, with Norske Skog insisting that the factory is not for sale since allowing new owners to take over would merely create a new competitor.
Critics pointed out that it was obvious that Norske Skog would reject Mr Stordalen and Mr Spetalen’s bid and some cynics have dismissed the pair’s efforts to safeguard the jobs at the factory as little more than a publicity stunt.
The investors have rejected such claims and say their plan to produce book paper rather than newsprint at the factory should ensure they would not compete with Norske Skog.
Regulatory scrutiny
Along with Mr Stordalen and Mr Spetalen, there are other, rather more discreet investors waiting in the wings.
Such investor interest has attracted the attention of Norway’s competition commission, which has vowed to look into whether Norske Skog’s refusal to sell the Skien-based factory as a going concern means it is abusing its market power.
This probe comes on top of an ongoing investigation by Brussels into allegations of price fixing. The investigation relates to Norske Skog and its competitors Stora Enso of Finland and Holmen of Sweden.
All the companies insist there is overcapacity in the European market and both financial analysts and investors agree.
Some analysts anticipate a shift of paper production both to Central Europe where factories can be placed closer to their customers and to South America where high quality trees can be grown very fast.
Indeed, US investment company Capital Group has raised its stake in Norske Skog to just over 10% since the row broke out in Norway, a move seen as an endorsement of the decision to shut the factory in Skien.
But in the paper industry there is more than one type of investor. About a fifth of Norske Skog’s share holders are Norwegian forestry owners who depend on the company as a customer for their wares.
Many of them are clearly deeply opposed to any plans to shift production out of the country, though there are no guarantees that even their voices will be heard.
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News - ‘Where we’d be without hormones’
Posted on August 28, 2007
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It is difficult to imagine a world without hormones.
Had they not been discovered 100 years ago, John F Kennedy would have lost his life as a young man to a hormonal imbalance, rather than to a bullet as US President.
People with Type 1 diabetes would still die because there would be no insulin therapy to treat them.
There would be no oral contraceptive pills and no babies born by IVF.
A century of discovery
It was Ernest Henry Starling who first coined the term ‘hormone’ in 1905.
He had been dining with academics at Cambridge University and needed a word to describe an agent released into the bloodstream that caused activity in a different part of the body.
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 The most dramatic discovery was insulin.
Professor Ashley Grossman
A woman’s battle with hormones
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It is thought that a colleague who was an authority on Greek poetry suggested the Greek verb for ‘excite’ or ‘arouse’, and the deed was done.
Scientists had been aware of such chemicals earlier than this.
In 1855, Thomas Addison described and later gave his name to the syndrome that would have killed JFK.
But he was largely ignored, and when the London Medico-Chirurgical Society would not publish his findings he committed suicide.
A French doctor called Brown-Sequard believed extract of testicles had a rejuvenating effect in man and tested it on himself.
Similarly, George Oliver, a spa physician working in Harrogate in 1893, believed extracts of the adrenal glands might raise low blood pressure and used his son as a guinea-pig.
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Hormone discoveries
1132 - Hsu Shu Wei prescribes pig’s testicular extract for impotence
1855 - Thomas Addison describes what became known as Addison’s disease
1912 - Schaefer names “insulin”
1950 Hench and Kendall treated rheumatoid arthritis with cortisone
1978 - Louise Joy Brown, the first test tube baby, is born thanks to the discovery of sex hormones
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Since then, more than 30 different hormones have been discovered and have changed the course of medicine and, in particular, the drugs we take.
Professor Ashley Grossman, consultant endocrinologist at Barts and the London Hospital, said: “The most dramatic discovery was insulin.
“Years ago, if you developed Type 1 diabetes then within a few weeks you were dead.
“But the earliest of all of the hormone diseases to be diagnosed was Addison’s disease, which was lethal until it was discovered that it was down to the adrenal glands not making cortisone.
“They started giving steroids to these patients and they lived.”
But there is a darker side to some of the discoveries.
Flip-side
In the 1950s and 60s, thousands of children born with a condition that means they never reach adult height were given injections of extracts of human pituitary glands from dead bodies.
“We now know that some of those bodies had the human form of mad cow disease, CJD, so a small but significant percentage of those children died,” said Professor Grossman.
He said taking steroid medicines over a long period of time, for arthritis for example, could give unwanted side effects.
He said it was possible to develop a condition similar to Cushing’s syndrome, which is caused by too much of the hormone cortisol in the body.
This can cause a multitude of problems such as unwanted weight gain, diabetes and osteoporosis.
Since sex hormones like testosterone were found, athletes have abused these steroids to out-perform opponents.
The animals we eat are also fed hormones to make them plumper and meatier.
Future fat fighter
Some fear female sex hormones are entering our water supplies via the urine of the millions of women using the contraceptive pill around the world.
They say this is changing the sex of male fish and potentially hampering human fertility.
Professor Grossman said most of the hormone research going on now was to look for ways to fight obesity.
Two have already been found - leptin, which tells your brain that it is full, and ghrelin, the hunger hormone that tells you to eat.
“Once we work out how they work we can block them and allow people to control their body shape,” he said.
“I’m sure we will continue to see dramatic discoveries. There are still quite a few hormones out there that we have yet to find.”
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News - Picture smoking warnings ‘best’
Posted on August 27, 2007
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Pictorial health warnings on cigarette packets are more likely to encourage smokers to quit, a Canadian study says.
The University of Waterloo-led research also found large and regularly updated text warnings were more likely to be noticed then smaller ones.
Researchers looked at different approaches taken in four countries - Canada, the US, the UK and Australia - analysing the impact on 15,000 smokers.
The UK currently uses text warnings, but picture alerts start this year.
Cigarette packets in Canada carry graphic warnings
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However, when the study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, started, the UK was only using smaller warnings.
This allowed researchers to monitor the impact of changing the nature of warnings.
Canada already uses graphic images, such as text saying smoking causes impotence accompanied by a drooping cigarette, on packets.
In Australia, large text warnings - just below the internationally recommended standards of 30% coverage of the cigarette packet - were introduced eight years before the study was carried out.
Small text warnings have been used in the US since 1984.
When asked if they noticed the warnings, 60% of Canadian smokers said they often did, compared to 52% of Australian smokers and 30% of US ones.
In the UK, awareness stood at 44% before the change in 2003, and 82% after.
Smokers
Some two and a half years after implementation of the larger text, awareness still stood at 67%, suggesting large text warnings were more noticeable than graphic warnings.
However, nearly 15% of Canadian smokers said they had been deterred from having a cigarette, more than the other three countries, including the UK, even once the larger warnings had been introduced.
Warnings like these are being brought in across the EU
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Researcher David Hammond said: “This study suggests that more prominent health warnings are associated with greater levels of awareness and perceived effectiveness among smokers.”
Deborah Arnott, of the anti-smoking charity Ash, said: “This study provides evidence to support the UK government’s proposal to add picture warnings on tobacco products.
“We urge the government to press ahead with the strongest possible images on to cigarette packs as soon as possible.”
But Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said the warnings were “disproportionate”.
“It is all about stigmatising smokers. Why don’t we put warnings on cars about the risk of crashing?”
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Posted on August 25, 2007
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