EX SURGEON GENERAL
DECLARES WAR ON A DISEASE
THAT DOES NOT EXIST
It was dinner time on an October evening
in 1996. Driving home from the office, I was having the usual conversation
with myself about what I was going to eat for supper. An announcer on
National Public Radio started in on another news story. "Former
Surgeon General of the United States, C. Everett Koop, has declared
a War On Obesity!" I was stunned. I was deeply offended and
I was angry. My nation had gone to war against me!
mmIt was not really news to me. I had been
in the trenches over my body size all of my life with my family, peers,
and society in general. But to hear an out in the open announcement
of this war was rather was frightening, demoralizing and heartbreaking.
Was there no place safe anymore?
mmSince
body size had been thrust into the public arena I decided it was time
to speak out publicly and to build a support network for myself and
other people of size. I began talking to all of my friends with body
issues about the need for us to stand together and help one another.
We have never formalized any kind of agenda but we are close and give
each other the help we need to go on with the fight.
mmOne of the ways I have spoken out about
these issues to the public is in two Sunday Services on Size Acceptance.
Jyaphia, my sister of size, and I, presented these at church. Both of
these services were very well accepted with lots of questions and affirmations
from our audiences. I have also written children's stories that deal
with size.
mmII personally do not believe in dieting.
As I say I've had a lot of experience... they just don't work. In my
56 years I have been on a lot of diets and lost a ton of weight. As
near as I can figure, I started my first diet when I was around six
years old. In the years I was dieting I calculate I lost enough pounds
to make pound for pound at least two more of me. I weigh over 300 pounds.
mmTaking the weight off was doable. It
was the keeping it off that was the problem. When people speak of yo-yo
dieting they are singing my song. Lose 20, gain back 30. Lose 5, gain
back 8. Lose 100, gain back 120. Do that forty or fifty times and you'll
wind up 49 years later hiding from the obesity police.
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 I
feel that our society puts its youth at risk with its unwarranted emphasis
on being thin.IIn the article "The
War On Fat's Casualties" in Tech Central Station, Sandy Szwarc
writes "Women and children are the primary victims of this relentless
harping. Almost half of all first graders and 90 percent of high school
girls are already dieting, even though only 10 to 15 percent of them are
over recommended weights. By college, almost all students have dieted,
disproportionate to the number with real weight problems, according to
multiple studies. One study, led by Lori Clayton Pereyra, M.F.C.S., R.D.,
C.D.N., and published in a 1997 Journal of the American Dietetic Association,
found half of students were currently on a diet even though only 18 percent
were outside recommended weights."
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FAT WARS BASED
ON FAULTY INFORMATION
In the 1998 New England Journal of Medicine,
editors Drs.
Jerome Kassirer and Marcia Angell, citing 36 scientific references,
wrote that scientific and medical research did not support the obesity-death
link.
mm"The data linking overweight and
death, as well as the data showing the beneficial effects of weight
loss, are limited, fragmentary, and often ambiguous. Most of the evidence
is either indirect or derived from observational epidemiologic studies,
many of which have serious methodological flaws. ... [T]hat [300,000]
figure is by no means well established. Not only is it derived from
weak or incomplete data, but it is called into question by the methodologic
difficulties of determining which of many factors contribute to premature
death. ... Calculations of attributable risk are fraught with problems
... when several known factors [physical inactivity, low fitness levels,
poor diet, risky weight loss practices, and less-than-adequate access
to health care, to name a few] are taken into account, it is even possible
that they account for more than 100 percent of deaths -- a nonsensical
result."
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