The Lancet could not be clearer on the obesity problem: Action is needed – and needed now.
The world-renowned medical journal has devoted a large chunk of this week’s issue to the problem.
A series of articles published by researchers from across the world are calling for more to be done. In effect, it is a call to arms for governments and society as a whole.
But how did we get here and what is the solution?
No-one noticed at the time, but the 1960s was probably the turning point for what has become the obesity epidemic.
As the world embraced the era of free love, they also began eating more.
The Lancet is one of those doctors’ mags, isn’t it? I guess they must believe that free love causes obesity now. But there’s more!
Abundant rich food, too little exercise, and lack of will on the part of policymakers could swell the number of obese Britons to a staggering 26 million by 2030, according to the latest forecast.
If current trends continue, the size of the clinically obese population in the UK will increase by 11 million over the next two decades, experts predict.
The resulting extra cost burden on health services coping with obesity-linked problems such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer would be £2 billion per year. This represents an overall increase in health spending of 2%.
In the worst case scenario, almost half of adult men in the UK could be obese by 2030. Obesity prevalence among UK men is forecast to rise from 26% to between 41-48%.
Look, there isn’t an “obesity epidemic”. Neither is there a “smoking epidemic” or a “tobacco epidemic”. These things aren’t epidemics.
Just like if lots of people start playing chess, there won’t be a “chess epidemic”. And if lots of people go sunbathing there won’t be a “sunbathing epidemic”. Just because a lot of people do something, doesn’t make it an epidemic. To say otherwise is to twist language.
What it really means is that a lot of busybody Nazi doctors are twisting language to make it seem like something that is no business of theirs actually is their business. It’s really just a scam to win more power and status and money.
It’s really no different from a bunch of army generals claiming that millions of crabs on Britain’s beaches constitute an invading army, which has to be stopped on the beaches with the full military might of the nation (appropriately reinforced with the latest expensive tanks and jets, of course).
These doctors have no business whatsoever telling people how to live their lives, what they should eat and drink and smoke. It’s none of their fucking business. It’s no more their business to tell people how to live than it is the job of lawyers and accountants or dentists or plumbers to tell people how to live. Doctors provide a service: they alleviate pain and suffering. So, in their different ways, do all the other professions. And that’s what they should stick to doing, and not get above themselves, and arrogantly imagine that they are some sort of omniscient new priesthood.
I sometimes think that there must be growing alarm in the medical profession at the way things are going. My guess is that most doctors simply want to treat patients’ maladies as best they can, and that’s all they want to do, and they don’t want to tell their patients how to live their lives, but instead enable them to live their lives in their own chosen way. If there are such doctors, it’s about time they spoke up, and formed an association of Doctors Who Don’t Want To Boss People Around. Because if they don’t, people like me are going to doubt that there are any such doctors, and when it comes to dismantling and reforming the medical profession (something which quite clearly must be done), and kicking out every single last one of these tyrannical Nazi doctors, then every single doctor will end up being booted out of the profession.
Frank Davis 
There’s always gasdoc and MBChB1961. Voices in the wilderness, though.
And Dr Ian Dunbar, who contributed to the CATCH debate by remarking that humans had lived in smoke-filled huts since time immemorial.
Seems to me doctors should remain doctors.When doctors become statisticians (check junk studies on ETS) , economists ( check cost of smoking) or air filter experts ( check air filtration in bars ) they fail miserably.No wonder that when an actual and unbiased research is done on their results,the truth appears (check House of Lords Committee,The Congressional Research Service).
Especially epidemiologists are the ones who cause the problems,because they need an epidemic in order for them to survive!
I even highly doubt about their peer review process & their journals.Why?
First of all I cannot see objectivity on journals that have the name ‘tobacco control journal’ when it comes to tobacco issues.It’s more than obvious bloody hell!
Then let’s see about peer review process.
The link from wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Criticism_of_peer_review.
On a personal level I happened to have some friends who are Phd holders in Finance.They told me that effectively the peer review process most of the times means nothing since there is a club,like an old boy network, who support each other no matter what .Especially if the person is a famous one on its field.Who would dare for example to criticize Stanton Glantz’s papers?
This is how the ‘researchers’ work nowdays :
Step 1) Overstate a problem
Step 2) Request monies from funding bodies, government, and other stipend sources
Step 3) Publish said research to garner public support for donations
Step 4) Rinse, wash, and repeat cycle
Question is ‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ (Who will guard the guards themselves?)
It seems to be the case that most of the antismoking zealot doctors are not family practitioners. They are people who have climbed up the medical hierarchy. I don’t know when was the last time that Richard Doll ever met a patient. Or George Godber. Or Liam Donaldson. Or Charles George. They have very often got ‘SIr’ in front of their name, which most family doctors don’t.
My own personal bete noire, Dr W, wasn’t a family doctor either, but a district health officer and BMA activist (and in fact a lot more than that, as I discovered when I recently found his obituary in the BMJ). He would have made an utterly useless family practitioner, because he was devoid of humour, compassion, common sense, and other attributes which I imagine are needed by such people. I don’t think he ever got a ‘Sir’ though.
Such doctors deal with people in the abstract, rather than in person. They are ‘doctors’ in name only, because they have the requisite qualifications. It seems entirely plausible that they may even have forgotten most of their medical training, because they never actually use any of it in any of the committee meetings they endlessly attend. They have become bureaucrats.
You couldn’t said it better Frank,most of the zealots don’t have connection with reality to see what’s going on,Cause if they did,they would have had a different perception of the theories they promote
Epidemiology is considered by many junk science.But in the past ,even amongst epidemiologists, there was no such hard line towards tobacco,alcohol etc the trend started to change during the 90’s and onwards
I don’t have something to support it,but I attribute that change towards:
– Jealousy & Betrayal.The disclosures from the tobacco industry that they were aware of potential harmful consequences of smoking from the 60’s,something they started to realise much later and decided to demonise a whole industry (Industry gets to be blamed on that as well…)
– Money.The more money the goverments (and later pharmaceuticals) were pouring towards ‘lifestyle’ directions,the more epidemiologists wanted to keep this trend
– WHO change of policy towards ‘lifestyle’ health directions, which started with that miserable Norwegian Prime Minister in the 90’s.Is it coincidence that nowadays from all the UN specialized agencies only WHO & World Bank are having a serious impact worldwide?
– Manichaistic approach of the issue.The more money our ‘good doctors’ are receiving,the more power have in their hands.But this power made them arogant,they were feeling superior,arrogant, baptising their efforts a battle of good versus evil.There are plenty of comments of those lunatics who have a ‘superheroes’ approach on the issues
– Lastly I will refer to the collapse of USSR.I mean come on,which serious goverment would had been spending money for tobacco/alcohol theoretical diseases if there was a real enemy to deal with?
No doctor of mine in the last 20 odd years has ever suggested I quit smoking, so either my experience is exceptional, or the majority of GPs are behaving as you describe, treating the ailment and letting the patient make their own decisions, while only the industry big cheeses mouth off about public health. They have the New Leaf posters up in the waiting room but that’s it. The only time I was asked about tobacco consumption was prior to a lung function test. After establishing I had the lungs of a 16 year old, despite being more than 30 years older, the nurses left it at that.
“Public health” is an abstraction, of course. As I remarked above, in reply to Dimi Karagian, most of these antismoking zealot doctors don’t seem to deal with people person-to-person, or face to face. They’re like those generals who pore over maps in their chateaus 20 or 30 miles behind the front line, largely oblivious to the carnage going on there.
I had minor surgery this year. The anaesthetist asked if I smoked and I replied that I did not. He said that would make my recovery from the anaesthetic quicker and easier.
I, along with 3 other women (all much younger than me) having the same surgery, went conveyor style into the operating theatre. I was 3rd in the queue.
Back in the ward I was the only one awake. I had my sandwich and drink and got up, got dressed and waited to be discharged. When the anaesthetist came round I told him that I had been a heavy smoker for over 50 years !! The other three women were just coming round (two were being sick and one was crying)
I left the ward and went out to have a smoke until my transport home arrived.
Quality.
I’m fortunate in that my GP enjoys fine cigars and single malt whisky. He recently returned from Geneva where he’d purchased some very nice Havana cigars, a couple of which we enjoyed whilst supping a tot or three of one of Abedour’s finest distillates.
There seems to be an awful lot of ‘word re-defining’ going on these days. I suppose it helps with the propaganda. I wonder who first had the thought: “I’ve had a great idea. To make [this thing] sound worse, let’s take a nasty word and apply it to [the thing]”
Thus, heart ‘conditions’ have become heart ‘diseases’. ‘Violence’ has become ‘abuse’. ‘Smokeless’ has become ‘smokefree’ – except that, in that particular case, a ‘nice’ word (free) has been tormented.
I’ve had the usual obligatory lectures from GPs in the past. Rather distant past actually as I’ve lost respect for the profession and have been fortunate enough not to fall seriously ill.
But I’ve only come across one medical doctor who was a serious anti-smoking zealot. And I happen to know that he has not treated a patient for thirty years or so. What would you make of someone who applied for a job but hadn’t had any relevant experience for thirty years? I wouldn’t be impressed.
Can we call them non-doctors? (Older readers might recognise the phrase)
@ Tony.
I think that the correct word is QUACKS. As I recall, the definition of a ‘quack’ is a person who is pretending to be a doctor, or a real doctor who is claiming miracle cures which are rubbish. We can therefore apply the word ‘quack’ quite correctly to the likes of Donaldson, even though he is not claiming a cure. What he is claiming is a (false) illness. SHS does not produce illnesses, and this is why Donaldson et al are QUACKS.
From now on, whenever I mention any of these professors, I shall refer to them as QUACKS. I might, for the time being, refer to them as ‘quack doctors’, just to reinforce the link between the word ‘quack’ and ‘doctor’.
Also, since there seems to be a free-for-all in respect of the meaning of words, I shall also refer to ‘quack’ scientists – mostly of the global warming variety. We could also talk about ‘quack’ politicians.
I like that idea very much indeed!
Junican,
I think you’re right that QUACK is indeed the correct term.
Many years ago, “Non-Doctor” was the PC description used to market vibrating dildos. Seemed somehow appropriate but maybe we should stick to “quack”.
My father always used to refer to doctors as “quacks”. He hardly ever went to them, since he was as strong as an ox all his life (despite smoking 60 a day at one point), and when he did he’d say he’d “been to see the quack”. At the time I thought it was a bit derisive of him to speak of them that way. Now however, it seems yet another example of his wisdom.
All I can say is my doctor smokes!
Even the head of NRMC PENSACOLA internal mediciene smoked a DR. BARBEIR!
He was my doctor when I had a DVT at the knee from a duece and a half fall on field manuevers in CAMP MITCHELL MS.
Quite amazingly the snot nosed brat LIETENANT INTERN who had been my so called assigned doctor at the first get go in the hospital warned me I had to stop smoking period. I asked why and he gave no response….Just saying it would cause more clotting in the leg……..Roll forward 60 days and not smoking by the fear of GAWD put into me,I tried smoking ginseng and any other non-tobacco product I could roll……….. Then I had a follow up with Dr barbier in his office at NRMC….He sat me down as he lit up a smoke and asked if I wanted one…………..!!!!
I told him what happened and he said, I WILL TAKE CARE OF THAT PUNK,he was warned before”! The the doc tells me to go to Keesler AFB in its coumadin clinic and on the walls they have boards listing the name brand of cigarettes and then the amount you smoke per day and then gives a daily dosage of coumadin to offset the vitamin k in tobacco that happens to be the cure for coumadin/rat poison blood thinners. Vitamin k thickens the blood!
And as paul harvey always said, thats the rest of the story!
My ideas precisely!