[Pil-pc-oceania] The fat scam

[Robyn Williamson]

The fat scam exposed, forwarded from SANET-MG.  Professor Patrick  
Basham of Health Care Policy at John Hopkins University says "There's  
not a lot of money in trying to debunk obesity, but a huge amount in  
making sure it stays a big problem".

70% of funding for the WHO body mass index figures came from the anti- 
fat pill industry, the figures are too low according to experts on  
both sides of the debate.  Read this and eat:

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Michele Gale-Sinex <mgs2369 at COMCAST.NET>
> Date: 11 March 2008 12:50:50 PM
> Subject: Experts doubt obesity epidemic
>
>
> Howdy, all--
>
> From AP via the /NYT/, this bit of unspeakable heresy which dares  
> to question one of the most dearly held, viciously applied, and  
> profitably marketed cultural myths of this nation:
>
> Fat people (i.e., anyone whose cachetic body wouldn't qualify for  
> the runways at Paris Fashion Week) take up space, therefore are  
> bad, and must die.
>
> It doesn't get much blunter than this:
>
>> In 2005, Katherine Flegal of the United States' Centers for  
>> Disease Control and Prevention published a study in the Journal of  
>> the American Medical Association, finding that overweight people  
>> typically live longer than normal-weight people. More than a dozen  
>> other studies have come to the same conclusion.
>>
>> Outrage ensued. Prominent health experts called the research  
>> flawed and worried that people would gleefully supersize their meals.
>>
>> ''I think some experts found it disturbing that we actually said  
>> that overweight people have a lower death risk,'' Flegal said.
>
>
>> ''We don't want people to think it's ok to be heavier,'' said Hill.
>
>
> The story goes on to point out the connection between "obesity  
> research" funding and the pharmaceutical corporations who profit  
> from casting perfectly healthy people as abnormal, ill, or needing  
> their products.
>
> Excerpt below; see the link for the full story.
>
>
> ruaha
> mish
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> Some experts doubt obesity epidemic
> http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Obesity-Heretics.html
>
> [snip]
>
> According to national health statistics released last month, from  
> 1993 to 2006, ''relatively little change'' was noted in weight  
> gain, with men and women gaining an average of about 4 kilograms (9  
> pounds). In children, no significant gains were recorded.
>
> The main problem, obesity skeptics say, is that too many people are  
> considered fat, with the obese and overweight often lumped together.
>
> ''Being moderately plump is not a health disadvantage,'' Marks  
> said. ''Some overweight people may not look svelte, but they may be  
> perfectly healthy.''
>
> As defined by the World Health Organization, anyone with a body  
> mass index above 25 is overweight, and anyone above 30 is obese.  
> Most experts agree the distinctions are imperfect and somewhat  
> arbitrary.
>
> Moreover, Marks and others point to research showing the benefits  
> of a few extra kilos (pounds).
>
> In 2005, Katherine Flegal of the United States' Centers for Disease  
> Control and Prevention published a study in the Journal of the  
> American Medical Association, finding that overweight people  
> typically live longer than normal-weight people. More than a dozen  
> other studies have come to the same conclusion.
>
> Outrage ensued. Prominent health experts called the research flawed  
> and worried that people would gleefully supersize their meals.
>
> ''I think some experts found it disturbing that we actually said  
> that overweight people have a lower death risk,'' Flegal said. In  
> other research, Flegal and colleagues found there to be almost no  
> link between death rates and weight.
>
> ''The relationship between weight and disease and survival is very  
> complex and we don't have a good handle on why some of these things  
> are related and others are not,'' Flegal said. She suggested that  
> being fat may help you survive some conditions, but not others.
>
> Doctors have long struggled to explain the obesity paradox -- the  
> mystery that in certain conditions like heart attacks, fat patients  
> often have better odds of surviving than thin people. Some experts  
> hypothesize that fat peoples' hearts already work harder than those  
> of thin people, thus giving them a natural edge when their bodies  
> are stressed.
>
> ''We don't want people to think it's ok to be heavier,'' said Hill.  
> ''But not everybody who gains weight is going to get heart disease  
> or diabetes,'' he said.
>
> Some obesity skeptics question the motives of experts who make dire  
> predictions about obesity.
>
> With millions of dollars for obesity researchers, an industry of  
> anti-fat drugs, and a boom in the number of doctors offering  
> surgeries like stomach-stapling, the more fat people there are, the  
> more profits there will be in selling them solutions.
>
> Experts on both sides of the obesity debate have often criticized  
> WHO's overweight and obesity measures, saying they are too low.
>
> When WHO defined the body mass index scores constituting normal,  
> overweight and obese, they appeared to be the result of an  
> independent expert committee convened by WHO.
>
> Yet the 1997 Geneva consultation was held jointly with the  
> International Obesity Task Force, an advocacy group whose self- 
> described mission is ''to inform the world about the urgency of the  
> (obesity) problem.''
>
> According to the task force's most recent available annual report,  
> more than 70 percent of their funding came from Abbott Laboratories  
> and F. Hoffman La-Roche, companies which make top-selling anti-fat  
> pills.
>
> The task force remains one of Europe's most influential obesity  
> advocacy groups and continues to work closely with WHO.
>
> The blurred lines between pharmaceutical money and obesity groups  
> have also caused concern in Britain. In 2006, one of the country's  
> top obesity doctors quit the organization he founded to combat  
> obesity, the National Obesity Forum, complaining that its goals had  
> been skewed by drug money.
>
> ''There's not a lot of money in trying to debunk obesity, but a  
> huge amount in making sure it stays a big problem,'' said Patrick  
> Basham, a professor of health care policy at Johns Hopkins University.
>
> ********************************************************