Page 2, Line 13 states - The suggestion that obesity is not a disease but rather a consequence of a chosen lifestyle exemplified by overeating and/or inactivity is equivalent to suggesting that lung cancer is not a disease because it was brought about by individual choice to smoke cigarettes
I don't think they're saying that "overeating" is a disease only that "being really fat" is a disease.
This is an inherent problem with medicine but their goals seem more practical than scientific. They want to tackle obesity as a whole rather than many individual diseases. Getting the weight of the population down could be a better use of their money than treating each comorbid disease.
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Forget the philosophical quibbles; what will this do in a practical sense? Will this provide semantic backing for insurers to pay for beneficial treatments or counseling, and doctors to treat obesity in their patients more thoroughly? Or will it provide an excuse for people who are fat, to label it a disease instead of a choice, and thus remain sedentary?
I think that's the crux of the pro/con argument I've heard about this.
The problem is that people say obesity is just a consequence of eating too much. Would we say that lung cancer is just a consequence of smoking? No. Lung cancer is a disease. The language goes to how we think about them and perhaps to how we act toward them. Lung cancer is really bad for you, obesity is also really bad for you. We have objective measures of both. It does make some sense to classify obesity as a disease even though there is no germ.
Basically they want doctor's to be willing to say "Your weight is causing this, we need to deal with it." and patients to understand how serious the health impact of their weight can be. That is probably a misperception on their part though, addicts are often know the impact of drug use as well or better than the general public. I'm sure the same is true of the obese on average.
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Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Exposure, maybe not. Acknowledgement of its deleterious affects, perhaps. This may just cut through some red tape to help more people get help. At least that's how I'm interpreting Sym's (and others') take on it.
On the flip side, I've already seen fitness and health people bad-mouthing it as something that abdicates the personal responsibility of obesity from the person.
I dunno. This doesn't affect me - I'm hardly cut but nowhere near obese - so it's mostly just interesting to me. I see the passive glorification of obese living habits on a daily basis in my town. It would be nice to see a collective shift in mentality.
I thought triglycerides were necessary and healthy for you (obviously, not in excess and some are better for you than others and in different ratios)? I think, on the first one, you meant Trans-fatty acids. Let me know if I'm mistaken.
Second hand smoke is way to indirectly communicate lung cancer. I can't think of an equivalent for any other disease. Certainly we consider every other kind of cancer to be a disease but they have no second hand smoke equivalent. The quote he's responding to is merely meant to argue that obesity can be thought of as a disease, not that it has any broader similarity to lung cancer.
Its a joke about how giving things scary names doesn't actually change them. Triglycerides are fats. Saccharides are sugars, the most popular sugar to add is sucrose which is a disaccharide.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
Honestly, "second hand eating" could be an equivalent. Juvenile Diabetes could be the outcome. If parents eat poorly, most likely, their children will eat poorly.
KMC Community Forums
Jun 20th, 2013 05:41 PM
