£810,000 compensation for sheer stupidity

[nickb]

£810,000 compensation for being stupid enough to engage in a course of action that led to brain damage.

BBC NEWS | UK | Woman left brain damaged by detox

"Just days after she started the Hydration Diet, she began to feel unwell and started vomiting.

"Things went from bad to worse, and within another couple of days she collapsed with the fit."

She’s clearly feeling unwell, yet continues to do herself further damage for two more days.

Why do people engage in these ridiculous fad diets AND, when they don’t work, refuse to accept any responsibility for the damage they do to themselves?

When the maximum compensation payment to our most seriously wounded troops has only just been increased to £570,000, how can this woman get 50% more by starving herself? It’s fucking perverse.

[Gary K]

£810,000 compensation for being stupid enough to engage in a course of action that led to brain damage.

you sure she didnt start off with brain damage?

[Richard Mason]

£810,000 compensation for being stupid enough to engage in a course of action that led to brain damage.

BBC NEWS | UK | Woman left brain damaged by detox



She’s clearly feeling unwell, yet continues to do herself further damage for two more days.

Why do people engage in these ridiculous fad diets AND, when they don’t work, refuse to accept any responsibility for the damage they do to themselves?

When the maximum compensation payment to our most seriously wounded troops has only just been increased to £570,000, how can this woman get 50% more by starving herself? It’s fucking perverse.

It is perverse, you are quite correct but the charlatans who peddle this quasi-science sh!t should also take the heat for promoting it too. It's just a pity her professional indemnity insurers paid out on it.

[MarkP]

The torouble is that the media constanlty bombards people with with non-science. The number of BS dietary / detox regimes published in middle market tabloids (and more reputable papers) is scary.

Then you have Channel 4 giving "Dr" Gillian McKeith a whole series! She's the chimp that says things like "pulses have all the nutrients and energy that a whole plant needs" and nobody stops her. At least they've been forced to drop the "Dr" tag from her show.

With all this hype it's no wonder that credulous morons put faith in shamen.

Hot dang, I'm off to get me some snake oil.

[witchieblackcat]

The court heard Mrs Page, from Faringdon, near Swindon, claimed Mrs Nash told her to drink large amounts of water and reduce her salt intake when she started the diet in October 2001.



She told the High Court that when she started vomiting Mrs Nash told her it was a normal part of the detoxification process.

To be fair, she was told it was normal to vomit.

[nickb]

To be fair, she was told it was normal to vomit.

Yeah right, vomiting is normal. A quick check with her GP would have been the sensible thing to do.

Why is it that some people can lose all sense of perspective and reason when offered the opportunity to lose weight without any effort? There is only one way to lose weight and it doesn't involve drinking more than a gallon of water every day.

£810,000 compensation is an obscenity, when guys are coming home from Iraq & Afghanistan without their legs and get a lot less.

[cuvavu]

I think that its a disgrace both that people can set them selves up as a nutritionists (though not a dietician - thay're regulated) without any qualifications or training or anything. And that the media (ALL the media, not just the usual suspects) publish this as truth.

Look at this:

Bad Science » The fishy reckoning

Schools spending thousands on pills rather than books or proper food in the canteens. AAARG.

more of this sort of crap dissected:

Bad Science » nutritionists

[wilbo]

if (calories in < calories out)
{
call loseweight;
}
else
{
call gainweight;
}

[aclivity]

one thing has surprised me from that story:

Hyponeutraemia can result when a person drinks too much water. This dilutes their blood and causes water to flood their cells and organs.

I was kind of under the impression that drinking water was pretty much always good for you. Not in a "lose 12 stone in a DAY" kind of way, but in a "keping hydrated" kind of way. How much water does one have to drink to suffer ill effects like this?

[cuvavu]

I was kind of under the impression that drinking water was pretty much always good for you. Not in a "lose 12 stone in a DAY" kind of way, but in a "keping hydrated" kind of way. How much water does one have to drink to suffer ill effects like this?

That's, in my opinion, part of the problem. There are so many people telling us stuff with no evidence that, unless we're very qualified, its impossible to work out what's true and what's not.