Dear Editor,

In his review of our paper on pro-anorexia Internet communities (Quality and Safety in Health Care 2006;15:220-222), Dr Smith introduced one inaccuracy into an otherwise concise summary. He mistakenly attributed a quotation from a participant in the Internet forum to our researcher. Angela (a pseudonym) had commented that she was intending to leave the group because she did not approve of some of the comments made by other participants. Dr Smith put these words in the mouth of our own Dr Ward, and then wondered why she had decided to stop her research.

This interpretation gives a slightly misleading overall impression of our own response to the pro-anorexia community. Whatever our own feelings about the philosophy of the group, our analysis sought to provide as objective an understanding of the participants' views as possible. We concluded our paper by suggesting that there is a coherent model of anorexia behind the pro-anorexia movement, and that to comprehend this apparently irrational desire to sustain very low body weight, it is necessary to understand this model first.

We hope this clarification will assist readers to make sense of our research and perhaps to take a look at the original paper. (Fox N, Ward K, O’Rourke A. Pro-anorexia, weight-loss drugs and the internet: an 'anti- recovery' explanatory model of anorexia. Sociol Health Illness 2005:944–71.)