When the individual’s right to free speech becomes a wrong for society

JOHN PRESCOTT, the former deputy leader of the British Labour party, was defined for a time in the public mind by the day he punched a protester at an election rally.

He has now chosen to redefine himself in his autobiography, by confessing to an eating disorder. For years, he reveals, any stressful political situation would cause him to stuff himself with food and then throw it up. He was not, he ruefully remarks, a particularly successful bulimic: he never managed to get thin.

His revelations were followed by an interesting set of responses. First was the Me Too reaction, with male celebs in middle age or older announcing that they too had spent years vomiting up gorged food and suffering the consequent guilt, shame and loss of self-esteem. One of those celebs was Uri Geller, whose mental capacity to bend spoons fell short of helping him control his intake at mealtime.

The second reaction took the form of arguably the most disgusting set of cartoons ever published in British media.

The third was an outbreak of retrospective worry, on the part of one of the Conservative newspapers, that Tony Blair should have had so sick a man making big decisions whenever he was absent from the country.

The final, and most pervasive reaction was to praise his courage in revealing all. It’s that last one that deserves most examination. On the one hand, Prescott’s revelations undoubtedly and demonstrably empowered men who had, up to now, believed themselves to be exceptional and isolated, in suffering a disorder publicly associated with young women. Because he’d gone first, they felt they could now admit to their problem and seek treatment for it.

On the other hand, the very publicity surrounding the confession will have introduced the concept of bingeing and purging to people who may now try it.

Of course enough coverage in print, on radio and TV and on the internet has been devoted to bulimia for the revelation that Prescott is a bulimic to come as a surprise, but not as such a surprise as to create a new wave of bulimics. But it may be worthwhile to examine the general acceptance that no aspect of a life should be regarded as private, and that sharing of this kind of information, even if it carries negative consequences, is, nonetheless, the Right Thing To Do.

A related topic has been bubbling on the internet for some time. It’s called “Diabulimia,” and is the preserve of diabetics.

Before insulin was available in injectable form, a new sufferer from Diabetes 1 would become aware that something was wrong with them when they experienced a raging thirst night, noon and morning, accompanied by rapid weight loss.

Pre-insulin, the only treatment available was dietary, with patients trying to eat foods their system could digest, as opposed to sugary foods.

Diabetics cannot transform sugar into food for muscles and brain. It floats in the bloodstream and is excreted in urine.

But, because the brain and muscles need sustenance, they draw it from within. First, the fat stores in the body are depleted. Then the muscles start to waste.

Pre-insulin, diabetics died fairly quickly after initial diagnosis, effectively starving to death.

Insulin changed all that, and each of us now knows families through which diabetes runs, striking at random, skipping a generation, then coming back.

Forty years ago, diabetics had rituals that became the property of an entire family. Food (slices of Hovis bread, for example) had to be weighed on tiny kitchen scales. The new diabetic was trained to inject themselves, practising on an orange. The family learned to watch for the symptoms that required fast administration of a lump of sugar because the injected insulin had done its job too enthusiastically.

Today, except for “brittle” diabetics who have difficulty controlling their condition, the weighing and measuring has become less obvious, and many diabetics carry pre-measured doses of insulin in little gadgets like fountain pens, which allow administration of the hormone, even in company, without anybody noticing.

However, young female diabetics often remember with nostalgic pleasure the weeks when the illness first manifested itself in their lives. The sudden loss of one, two or even three stone. The effortless loss of that weight. The concern of parents about the new fragility of their previously sturdy daughter. The admiration of peers who assumed a new killer diet was in progress. The thrill of buying jeans two sizes smaller than those worn beforehand.

A FEW of those diabetics, once treated, could not bear the weight gain that ensued, as insulin went to work. They figured that skipping the odd dose would help them control their weight. It did. They worked it out that skipping more than the odd dose would help them lose weight. It did.

Now, here’s the rub. If that information had not been shared, the cohort of diabulimics would have remained small. But it was shared.

One widely reported case study tells of a 13-year-old at an American summer camp for diabetics, who overheard the medical counsellors giving a lecture to two other camp residents, who’d been caught skipping their insulin.

The counsellors left the two in no doubt that their quest for thinness through insulin abuse would kill them, blind them or cause them to have limbs amputated in the future. The girl who overheard the diatribe heard all of the warnings. But she embarked, straight away, on insulin abuse herself.

Because the word spread — particularly through the internet — specialists in diabetic care now face growing numbers of insulin abusers or diabulimics who, after 10 or more years of playing with their medications, are experiencing the consequences.

“At 30 my independent life fell apart,” one 38-year-old diabulimic has written.

“I woke one morning with a black splodge of marmite obscuring most of the vision from my left eye. Then the pain started — pain that would wake me screaming from sleep. I now can barely walk, can’t drive, have renal failure, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and frequent admissions to hospital with pneumonia.”

Discussing this issue during the week with a researcher from a television programme, I found myself sounding like a one-woman censor.

The researcher held the view that information must be shared, regardless of the consequences. That it is not for one group or individual to restrict another group or individual’s access to objective data, even if they choose to do themselves harm by the use of that data.

She is right, of course. Except that, worldwide, a consensus exists that sharing information on how to create weapons of mass destruction goes beyond the limits of free speech and free information-sharing.

The old axiom was that free speech did not include the right to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, because it would cause a lethal race for the exits.

I cannot help but wonder if John Prescott — and this column — amount to the modern equivalent of that shout: delivering information to which people have rights, but which might kill them.