If the
T-4
program were introduced in the Netherlands today -- which is not
all that unlikely, considering the political power of the medical
profession and increasing acceptance of "euthanasia" -- the first
people marched into the gas chambers would surely be fat people. Hardly
a day goes by in this country without a TV documentary, newspaper
article, column, or cartoon deprecating body fat and its owners.
“Fat people are lazy, stupid, hideous, and filthy. They lack
self-control and give in to their urges. … They stink. … Their
perversion costs the taxpayer hoards of money.” Thus unashamedly wrote
Pam van Vliet, a columnist in one of the Dutch newspapers with national
distribution, on July 18, 2005. Not one of these claims is unique to
fat people. They have in the past been hurled at Jews, Blacks,
immigrants, unmarried mothers, homosexuals, (homeless) disabled people,
and any other groups that it was fashionable to disparage in the
particular time and place. And as was the case with these other groups,
the claims have the full backing of the medical and scientific
professions, lending them respectability and immunity against protests
of slander.
Van Vliet went on to say, “Their hearts are clogged with fat, they have
diabetes with all of its consequences, their knees and backs are worn
out, they are constipated. … We thin, fit people wind up paying for
it.” It is of course socialized medicine that compels us to pay for
each other’s health care. Putting this issue aside for the moment,
let’s look
at those health claims:
Fat people are fat inside and out, so their hearts are no doubt fat
too. Is this a major cause of heart disease? Maybe. But the medical
consensus seems to be that not fat but heredity is. Of course, a
propensity to be fat is claimed by the docs to be hereditary as well.
Or maybe they think gluttony is a hereditary vice, in accordance with
the degeneration theory popular among the physicians who were hitler's
most ardent supporters. Recent research implies that what
really
overtaxes fat people’s hearts may be recurrent crash diets.
Not that we should base any political policy on medical research. There
is an overwhelming amount of such research being done, most of it of
questionable value. “New insights” are being introduced every day. In
any case at this point in time there is no methodologically sound proof
that fat people have significantly more heart disease than thin people.
Do fat people have more diabetes? Perhaps, though the disease is by no
means unique to fat people, and most fat people are not diabetic. The
massive advertising campaign of the Dutch Diabetes Society, “You may
have diabetes and not know it” leads one to suspect that the diagnosis
and treatment of diabetes is Big Business, possibly contributing to
over-diagnosis and over-treatment.
What about fat people’s knees and backs? Yes, these certainly bear a
lot more strain than thin people’s. As to constipation, I don’t know.
I’ve never heard this one before. Van Vliet doesn't say on what she
bases her claims.
So in socialized medicine, do thin people foot the bill for fatness?
This implies that fat people pay fewer taxes or premiums, or consume
more health services. No doubt some conditions for which
medical treatment is sought
are more common in the obese. But
this can be properly evaluated only by taking into account other
illnesses that are
less common in the same population. Fat
people seem to have good immune systems. They rarely suffer from colds
or flu, while these illnesses tend to
strike thin people several times a year. Fat people are also not
plagued with malnutrition or wasting diseases. And they are less likely
to sustain injuries by engaging in risky activities like sports,
dancing, and stunts. Of course these politically incorrect claims
cannot be backed with authoritative
statistics derived from scientific research, because who would pay for
it?
The professionals heatedly competing for taxpayer financed health funds
for fat research and treatment are not proposing to deal with proven
fat-related illnesses. Such illnesses don't exist. They redefine
fat as disease, and propose to target it as such. There are, after all,
a lot more fat people than sick people. Fat is a veritable gold mine
for research funding, as opposed to real diseases that affect only a
small segment of the population.
And then there is the
impopular
argument that if certain people are less
healthy, they will
en masse die younger, sparing the taxpayer
the cost of collective years of pension payments and nursing home care.
However, such famous heavyweights as Benjamin Franklin, Winston
Churchill, and Alfred Hitchcock demonstrate that fat is not necessarily
an obstacle to longevity. Instead of blindly swallowing the statistics
we are force-fed by (pharmaceutical company funded) researchers, look
around in your own environment. How many people do you know who died
young from a heart attack or diabetes? How many are or were receiving
long-term treatment? Are you sure the disease, not the treatment, was
the cause of death? How many of these people were significantly obese?
Is that more than in the general population? (Note
that people with certain heart diseases tend to be inflated by water
retention. This could contribute to the
perceived link between heart disease and fat.)
Considering how reviled fat is, it would surely be taboo to suggest
that any condition affecting over half of an affluent population is
likely to
be a normal and healthy, if not superior, human condition. Nonetheless,
the overwhelming majority of people aspire to be thin. We
are not in the business of discouraging people form achieving their
self-imposed goals, quite the contrary. But the people aspiring to
thinness may be costing the health system a great deal more than the
people who accept their fat, even not counting the treatment of
anorexia. In other words, anti-fat propaganda
and social pressure to be thin probably cost the health system more
money than fat itself. Thin
people pay for fatness no more than fat people pay for thinness.
If the
cost of fat truly
were unbearable for socialized medicine, then
it is socialized medicine that should be axed, not fat people. Has
history not warned us sternly enough of the social consequences of
stigmatization, vilification, and scorn poured on entire segments of
the population by medical science? Do we really want to set any group
up to be the next victims when
T-4
is reinstated?
