Medicine news.

Up to half of all body piercings lead to acute infections which require medical treatment, and there have been two piercing-related deaths in Europe this year, the commission said.

It added that precious little was known about the chemical structure and toxicity of many of the dyes used in tattooing and warned that many people were effectively injecting car paint into their skins.

“Except for a limited number of dyes that have been approved for use in cosmetics most chemicals used in tattoos are industrial pigments originally produced for other purposes such as automobile paints or writing inks,” it said in a statement. “They have little or no safety data to support their use in tattoos. Would you inject car paint into your skin?”

When health standards are disregarded -and it said they often were - people anxious to decorate and personalise their body with dye or metal had paid dearly for bad practices.

“These practices can bring about viral infections such as hepatitis, HIV, bacterial and fungal infections, allergic reactions such as skin irritation, and malignant lesions such as melanoma, leprosy and other devastating diseases.”

Other problems associated with body art were toxic shock syndrome, tetanus, venereal ulcers, tuberculosis and a host of skin diseases, it added.

“If people want to tattoo or pierce their bodies we would like them to do so with proper health and safety guarantees,” said Philippe Busquin, the EU commissioner for the research.

He said existing regulations were limited to hygiene conditions in tattoo and piercing parlours themselves but that, he argued, was not enough.

“They are mostly limited to prescribing hygiene practices such as the use of gloves and the of needles. (But) they do not tackle the issue of sterility of materials, dyes and colours, their purity or the need for a proper and risk evaluation.”

The answer, after methodical study of brasseries, eateries, pizza parlours, Chinese and Hard Rock cafes in both countries, is simple: the French eat less of everything. And they eat less because they are served smaller portions.

The French paradox has baffled European and US scientists for more than a decade.

Only 7% of the French are obese, compared with a whopping 22% of all Americans.

Coronary heart disease is the biggest killer in the US, but not in France. Yet the French smoke Gitanes, breakfast on buttery brioche, lunch and dine off confit of duck, sausage, fat goose livers and camembert. They drink wine, round off their meals with cognac, and while away the afternoon with strong coffee and mouthwatering pastries.

Researchers have offered a confusing range of speculation over the years. There might be something specially healthy about goose fat, one group argued. Alcohol, olive oil and salad were all important in a heart-smart diet, said another. Red wine itself might explain the difference, said a third.

So scientists from and the French research agency CRNS in Paris teamed up to compare servings in comparable dining places in the two cities.

They report in the September issue of Psychological Science that they combed restaurant guides, sampled soft drinks and other purchases in supermarkets, and sat down at 11 pairs of eateries to weigh the portions dished up.

Mean portion size across all Paris was 277g (9.8oz), compared with an average in Philadelphia of 346g (12.2oz) - about 25% more. Only in the Hard Rock Cafe chain did the Parisian portions match the US ones.

Philadelphia’s Chinese restaurants served 72% more than the Parisian ones. A supermarket soft drink in the US was 52% larger, a hotdog 63% larger, a carton of yoghurt 82% larger.

The lesson is that though the French diet was rich in fat, overall, the Americans consumed more calories. Over the years, this would lead to substantial differences in weight.

“If food is moderately palatable, people tend to consume what is put in front of them, and generally consume more when offered more food,” said Paul Rozin, a at the University of Pennsylvania. “Much discussion of the obesity epidemic in the US has focused on personal willpower, but our study shows that the environment also plays an important role, and that people may be satisfied even if served less than they would normally eat.”

But now Walter Cronkite’s reputation for trust could be tested in court as he faces a double : the revelation that he was hired to appear in what amounted to infomercials posing as news - followed by a lawsuit from the infomercial makers, for backing out of the deal.

Cronkite - a veteran of the CBS network, famous for signing off each broadcast with the authoritative words “and that’s the way it is” - agreed to present “news breaks” on health problems and the drugs available to treat them.

But drug companies had paid around $15,000 (9,000) apiece for the privilege of being featured in the segment, entitled American Medical Review.

The “news breaks” were made by a Florida-based company, WJMK Productions, for broadcast on public television stations around the US.

Yesterday WJMK sued Cronkite, who is 86 and now retired, for $75,000, claiming he had “flagrantly” breached a contract worth $50,000.

Cronkite, for his part, had agreed to film for two days, but pulled out of the deal after the details of his involvement were revealed by the New York Times.

But his lawyer insisted yesterday that he had not been given the full facts.

“It was represented as being educational in nature, not commercial in nature,” the lawyer, Gerald Singleton, said.

“Had Walter known that going in, he would never have been associated with that. Walter does not endorse products. He was defrauded.”

WJMK was not available for comment yesterday, but earlier the company denied that its films were commercial ventures, insisting that they were educational, despite the fact that companies pay to appear.

WJMK even made an offer of coverage - in return for $14,900 - to the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based pressure group which campaigns for honesty in the presentation of medical information.

Jeff Cronin, CSPI’s communications director, said: “I asked the producer - or rather I should call him a salesman - whether there would be any disclosure that my organisation was paying for the privilege, and he assured me no.

“There would be no disclosure that they were getting money to let any company talk about any ‘miracle cure’ it wanted.

“This is a case where someone’s good reputation is being misused to do an infomercial.

“But whoever was doing the deal for Cronkite was giving him really bad advice.

“The internet is literally crawling with infomercials for drug companies, lame consumer products, incontinence remedies, that kind of thing.”

On many of the hundreds of cable television channels in the US infomercials are ubiquitous, often stretching on for minutes, their compellingly shoddy production values perhaps accounting for many of their viewers.

As in Britain, improbable food preparation devices predominate, although drugs and exercise equipment follow close behind.

Last year CNN and ABC announced stringent guidelines after it was revealed that celebrities paid by drug companies had frequently appeared on news shows to discuss their without revealing the financial relationship.

The founder of Microsoft travelled to rural Mozambique to announce the donation of 100m ($168m) to fight malaria, ushering in what some call a new era of .

He almost doubled what the rest of the world - governments, the UN and charities - spend on a disease that kills a million people every year, 90% of them in Africa.

Some of the money will accelerate research on new malaria prevention and new drugs to fight drug-resistant strains of the disease. Most of it will go into a quest for a vaccine which, if successful, could transform the continent.

“It is time to treat Africa’s malaria epidemic like the crisis it is,” Mr Gates said. “It is unacceptable that 3,000 African children die every day from a largely preventable and treatable disease.”

The World Health Organisation and the government of Mozambique hailed the donation as a humanitarian gesture that partly filled a huge gap in funding for malaria research.

Malaria is a parasitic disease, transmitted by mosquitos, of which the most deadly, Plasmodium falciparum, is the most common in Africa. Inside the body the parasite infects the liver and red blood cells, impairing the blood flow to vital organs. In homes and clinics across the continent the pale, shivering sufferers of the disease can be seen.

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but the came just days after Forbes Magazine published a rich list topped for the 10th consecutive year by Mr Gates and his 28bn fortune.

The 47-year-old chairman and co-founder of the computer software group is up 1.8bn from last year because of the improvement in the share price of dotcom stocks, keeping him in a plutocratic class of his own.

After initial criticism that he was hoarding, Mr Gates has promised to give away all his wealth, bar a few million dollars for his two children, before he dies.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he runs with his wife, overtook the London-based Welcome Foundation several years ago as the world’s biggest charitable foundation, with assets of 14bn. It has already spent more than 1.9bn on various health projects in developing countries.

Unlike many American foundations, the Gates one doles out a hefty proportion of its assets and takes care to back worthy, useful causes, said Stacey Palmer, editor of Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper of the non-profit world.

Its headquarters is an anonymous, unmarked two-story building in Seattle with a staff of about 100 to manage a budget greater than the GDP of many countries.

The foundation paid for dozens of journalists to accompany Mr and Mrs Gates for a tightly managed media event. It was partly an attempt to polish their image, but also a shrewd use of the media to highlight a neglected issue, said Ms Palmer.

“There’s got to be an element of wanting good publicity, but Bill and Melinda Gates come across as sincere,” she said. In absolute terms, their foundation had surpassed the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie.

Mr Gates is fascinated with biology and scientific advances such as mapping the genome of the mosquito, believing that the insights can benefit the poor and sick.

Today he will meet Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg to discuss combating HIV/Aids, followed by a trip to Botswana tomorrow to visit Aids clinics and research projects. But malaria is his best chance to do good, he believes, because the funding for the fight against it is so low. Speaking at a malaria clinic in Manhica, a dusty village some 50 miles north of the capital, Maputo, he said the money would be divided into three grants.

Some 17m will go over five years for research on a new prevention strategy to use existing drugs to protect infants from the disease; 24m will go over five years to the Medicine for Malaria venture, a Geneva-based public-private partnership to develop new drugs to replace those to which mosquitoes have become resistant; and 61m will go over four years to the Seattle-based Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which believes a vaccine is possible because some people become naturally immune.

Some scientists say an effective vaccine may never materialise and that the funds would be better spent on basic things such as insecticide-treated nets and sprays to control mosquitoes. But Mr Gates was upbeat. Like polio and smallpox, malaria could be conquered, he said.

Sebastial Matusse, 40, watching the Gates cavalcade as she queued outside a clinic, could only hope he was right. Malaria has caused her to have two miscarriages, claimed the lives of two infant children, and was yesterday afflicting for the seventh time her son Sebastio, five, who shivered in a blanket in her arms.

Two dozen mothers and children missed church to meet what clinic officials told them was a white man who wanted to help.

Seated under a corrugated tin roof, they gazed at the couple sitting cross-legged on the reed mats and tried to ignore the phalanx of TV cameras and photographers.

Mr Gates held Galia Machava, a four-month-old who was too busy playing with the hem of her pink dress to appreciate the symbolism - the richest of the rich cradling the poorest of the poor.

Africa bears brunt of mosquito-borne peril

Every year 300 million-500 million people are infected with malaria. One million die - 90% of them in Africa

Malaria kills 3,000 African children every day and is the leading cause of death among children in Africa

The disease is spreading so rapidly in Africa because of the growth in resistance to standard anti-malaria drugs, such as chloroquine

Malaria costs Africa an estimated 7.3bn in lost GDP

Strategies used to combat the disease include insecticide-treated nets, drugs, and sprays to control mosquitoes

Current spending on local malaria control is 120m a year. But scientists say 900m to 1.5bn is needed

Malaria consumes 40% of public health spending in Africa and accounts for up to half of inpatient admissions and outpatient visits in the worst-affected areas

Malaria is responsible for 24% of all hospital deaths and 44% of outpatient hospital visits in Mozambique

Ren Ee Chee of the government-run Genome Institute of Singapore told the island republic’s Sunday Times that the respiratory pathogens detection chip would undergo testing soon in with an unnamed US company.

Detection probes on the chip, which is about the size of a 10p coin, will analyse saliva or nasal mucus dropped on to it and deliver a rapid diagnosis.

“Patients who have flu, dengue fever or Sars all exhibit similar symptoms in the early stages of infection,” Professor Ren was quoted as saying.

“The chip will be able to test for all this at once, identify if it’s one or the other and doctors will have a clear picture from the start.”

Ever since Sars, or the severe acute respiratory syndrome, killed 33 people in Singapore this year, the government has been pouring resources into finding a reliable diagnosis and a cure.

It is also hoping to turn Singapore into a global biomedical hub as part of its strategy to diversify an economy battered by the technology slump. High-profile scientists including Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, have been lured to the tightly controlled state.