Don't Worry, Be Fatty?

Don't Worry, Be Fatty?
By Michael Fumento
Scripps Howard News Service, May 20, 2004
Copyright 2004 Scripps Howard News Service


Obesity can be as dangerous as smoking, and according to the CDC more
Americans will soon die of obesity than of tobacco use.

Imagine you're a smoker with trouble quitting. Then somebody
authoritatively assures you that centuries of observation and thousands of
published studies on tobacco's harm are bunk borne of hysteria. Moderate
smoking is actually good for you, while chain-smoking is fine if you
exercise a bit. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to
sell you or a new book by Colorado law professor Paul Campos called The
Obesity Myth.

Hippocrates himself, over two millennia ago, connected being overweight
with sudden death. So did insurance actuaries of the 19th century. Last
year the Journal of the American Medical Association reported ( that white
men ages 20 to 30 with a Body Mass Index (BMI ) greater than 45 lost 13
years of life compared with those with a BMI below 25. (A BMI over 25 is
considered overweight.) At the same time, the Annals of Internal Medicine
reported six to seven years of lost life for obese 40-year-old nonsmokers,
putting them at the same risk as smokers who weren't obese.

Campos knows he's swimming against a tsunami of peer-reviewed medical
literature and has no health background. (Full disclosu I'm also a
lawyer but became a full-time health writer 17 years ago). He counters this
in several ways.

First, he claims there's a medical establishment conspiracy so immense that
the Illuminati are amateurs by comparison. Then he presents "size
acceptance" activists as the real experts, heavily drawing on their
assertions. Finally, he selects individual medical studies and tortures
them until they confess to his truth, while ignoring the thousands of
studies that even a skilled jurist can't twist.

Campos tries desperately to convince readers that thinness is the real
health problem, notwithstanding reports such as the Jan. 1, 1998, New
England Journal of Medicine one that observed 300,000 men and women over a
12-year period. "It's the very lean weight that is associated with the best
survival rate," concluded the lead researcher.

Instead, he repeatedly asserts that in some studies the thinnest died
first, thereby ignoring the caveats of the authors themselves that this
result disappears if you exclude those whose thinness was from smoking or a
wasting disease such as cancer.

Thus, the landmark 1995 New England Journal of Medicine study that followed
over 115,000 women for 19 years found, "Among women who had never smoked,
the leanest women in the cohort (those with BMIs below 19.0) had the lowest
mortality." Deaths "were lowest among women whose weights were below the
range of recommended weights in the current U.S. guidelines."

Actually, only a small part of Campos' book even addresses the health
effects of obesity. Most of it simply assumes his conclusion, so that he
can pontificate on peripheral issues such as (Honestly!) "How weight-loss
mania fueled the impeachment of Bill Clinton."

"Hey! I may be fat, but I'm fit!"

Therefore, Campos devotes less than two pages to pooh-poohing the notion
that obesity causes heart disease, relying on quotes and select studies
dating back to 1950. Yet enter "obesity" and "heart disease" into the
PubMed online database of science and medical journals and you'll pull up
more than 2,900 studies.

Why all this research on a non-existent phenomenon? The latest such study
at this writing appears in the May 2004 American Heart Journal and comes to
the standard conclusion that, "BMI appeared to have a positive, graded
relation with post-myocardial infarction death." Translation: The heavier
you are, the more likely you'll die of a heart attack. Another PubMed
search reveals many thousands of studies associating obesity with stroke,
cancer, diabetes and a gargantuan list of lesser illnesses.


Meanwhile, a just-released Rand Corporation study found a striking increase
in disability among Americans from obesity, while a January 2004 Obesity
Research study concluded, "Annual U.S. obesity-attributable medical
expenditures are estimated at $75 billion."
How strange that a harmless or even beneficial medical condition could
prove so expensive! As to Campos' advocacy of what's called "fat-but-fit,"
yes fat exercisers will be fitter than fat non-exercisers.

But fat is a tremendous impediment to exercise. Studies also repeatedly
show that people who lost weight but didn't exercise were healthier than
matched controls who exercised but didn't lose weight.

With two-thirds of Americans overweight, there's a clear potential for fat
profits here. In fact, at least a dozen "Don't Worry, Be Fatty" books have
preceded this one, with titles like Fat!So?. They all tell heavy people
what they want to hear rather than what they need to. Campos merely sings
the latest version of that sweet Siren song. And like those songs of Greek
mythology, this one kills.

Read Michael Fumento's additional work on obesity and on the FDA.

Michael Fumento is the author of numerous books. His book, BioEvolution:
How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World, was published in October 2003 by
Encounter Books.

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On 21 May 2004 19:32:12 +0200, Margaret Benjamin

wrote:
Ony a coward would post this drivel under someone else's name.

How does it feel to be played like a piano?

LV


Lady Veteran
- -----------------------------------
"I rode a tank and held a general's rank
when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank..."
- -Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
- ------------------------------------------------
People who hide behind anonymous remailers and
ridicule fat people are cowardly idiots with no
motive but malice.
- ---------------------------------------------
"To Do Is To Be" Socrates
"To Be Is To Do" Plato
"Do Be Do Be Do" Sinatra
- -------------------------------


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On Fri, 21 May 2004, Lady Veteran wrote:
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On 21 May 2004 19:32:12 +0200, Margaret Benjamin

wrote:
Ony a coward would post this drivel under someone else's name.

How does it feel to be played like a piano?

LV

Instead of lunging at the OP, as is your usual behavior, why not address
the issues in the article?

It is well known that obesity has deadly consequences, but fat acceptors
choose to believe in charlatans like Paul Campos because it sanctions their
irresponsible eating habits.

By the way, when was the last time you posted something "on topic" to this
newsgroup? I've never seen one - has anyone else? Doesn't that make you
the worst troll given the number of your off topic posts?

HTH

S*nort

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On 21 May 2004 19:48:48 -0000, S n o r*t wrote:

On Fri, 21 May 2004, Lady Veteran wrote:
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Hash: SHA1

On 21 May 2004 19:32:12 +0200, Margaret Benjamin

wrote:
Ony a coward would post this drivel under someone else's name.

How does it feel to be played like a piano?

LV

Instead of lunging at the OP, as is your usual behavior, why not
address the issues in the article?

It is well known that obesity has deadly consequences, but fat
acceptors choose to believe in charlatans like Paul Campos because
it sanctions their irresponsible eating habits.

By the way, when was the last time you posted something "on topic"
to this newsgroup? I've never seen one - has anyone else? Doesn't
that make you the worst troll given the number of your off topic
posts?

HTH

S*nort

And you insist on posting where you are not welcome. What fat people
do or don't do is their business not yours. I will not discuss weight
loss in this group, or anywhere with an idiot that thinks he is
better than everybody else.

I will not participate in discussing topics that are off topic. I
will not give you are reason to exist outside of a roasting pan.

LV


Lady Veteran
- -----------------------------------
"I rode a tank and held a general's rank
when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank..."
- -Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil
- ------------------------------------------------
People who hide behind anonymous remailers and
ridicule fat people are cowardly idiots with no
motive but malice.
- ---------------------------------------------
"To Do Is To Be" Socrates
"To Be Is To Do" Plato
"Do Be Do Be Do" Sinatra
- -------------------------------


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On Fri, 21 May 2004, Lady Veteran wrote:
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Hash: SHA1

On 21 May 2004 19:32:12 +0200, Margaret Benjamin

wrote:
Ony a coward would post this drivel under someone else's name.

How does it feel to be played like a piano?

LV

Instead of lunging at the OP, as is your usual behavior, why not address
the issues in the article?

It is well known that obesity has deadly consequences, but fat acceptors
choose to believe in charlatans like Paul Campos because it sanctions their
irresponsible eating habits.

By the way, when was the last time you posted something "on topic" to this
newsgroup? I've never seen one - has anyone else? Doesn't that make you
the worst troll given the number of your off topic posts?

HTH

S*nort