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Unethical Website of the Month June 2005
".000"
If you are a television junkie and watch shows like "Judging Amy", you may well have encountered the issue raised by ".000" and a surprising number of web sites just like it: sites that promote and encourage anorexia nervosa and bulimia. "Pro-ana" sites, they are called, the confused product of young women seeking self-esteem and empowerment while embracing a lifestyle that arises out of low self-esteem and feelings of powerlessness. These web sites manage to maim and perhaps kill with ideas put forth gently and with a caring touch. It is hard to imagine a more damaging use of the internet.
.000 is a site that celebrates a deadly disease and provides advice about how sufferers can hide their symptoms and undermine treatment. The counter argument, and the Scoreboard certainly hears from lots of people willing to make it, is that the site does no more than allow young women to make a choice affecting only them, just like a choice to use drugs, have an abortion, be a prostitute or commit suicide. The Lesley Gore refrain "It's my body, and I'll starve if I want to."
The "live and let live" crowd, who decry making ethical distinctions because it occasionally requires telling someone that they are wrong and doing wrong, seem to be remarkably unmoved when their laissez faire approach results in "live and let die." Indeed, ".000's" home page includes rhetoric that perfectly embodies this attitude:
"This is not a place for those who bow to consensus definitions of reality or who believe in the cancerous fallacy that there is any other authority on earth besides their own incontrovertibly self-evident, inherent birthright to govern themselves."
There are no laws that prevent or punish web sites that would seem to be the equivalent of the famous example (devised by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Homes) of speech that the First Amendment doesn't protect, shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Sites showing people how to kill themselves, make bombs or illegal drugs, engage in terrorist activities, self-mutilation, child pornography and more exotic horrors can provide the spark to ignite the waiting underbrush of unsettled minds, but because they lie on the slippery slope to government censorship, the law cannot control them. They must be controlled instead by ethical judgement, which includes fostering comprehension by those who run these sites that they do have a responsibility for the sites' impact on impressionable and vulnerable visitors.
.000 is miles from that point. "This is a pro-ana website," it states defiantly. "That means this is a place where anorexia is regarded as a lifestyle and a choice, not an illness or disorder. There are no victims here. If you regard anorexia exclusively as a disease, see yourself as the "victim" of an "eating disorder" in need of "recovery", or are seeking "recovery," it is strongly suggested that you leave this site immediately…I REFUSE to be held responsible for YOUR decisions since I am not able to make YOUR judgment calls for you."
But saying something does not make it so. There are victims there, and any young woman who is persuaded by the site's argument that anorexia is a courageous lifestyle rather than a deadly illness is one. And while one can refuse to accept responsibility for the consequences on one's unethical acts, the responsibility remains.
Pro-ana web sites spread a disease, and give a whole new meaning to the term "computer virus." We can't ban them, and we're unlikely to change the minds of the confused fanatics who create them. But we can, and should, call them what they are.
Sad, dangerous, and unethical web sites.