WP/AP: CDC Chief Backs Away From Report On Obesity

CDC Chief Backs Away From Report On Obesity
Associated Press
Friday, June 3, 2005; Page A07


Weighing a little too much may not kill you, but there is nothing healthy about it, the head of the nation's health agency said yesterday, distancing herself from a controversial report suggesting that being overweight is not so bad.

Health experts increasingly are faulting a recent study by scientists at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that concluded that obesity is not nearly as dangerous as was thought and that being a little plump may actually lower the risk of death.

At a news conference, CDC Director Julie L. Gerberding acknowledged potential flaws in the study and pledged to get scientists and the public back on track....

***

The disputed report, published in April, said obesity accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States, vastly lower than the 365,000 deaths estimated just months earlier. Mildly overweight people had a 20 percent lower risk of dying than those who weigh less, it also found.

Many scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health, the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society now reject those conclusions. They say the study's main flaw is that it included people with health problems, such as cancer and heart disease, who tend to weigh less because of those problems.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/02/AR2005060201974.html

I suspected that this was what they were doing. They willfully overlook the difference between causation and correlation. Being in many terminal conditions may correlate strongly with being underweight. Likewise, the way BMI is calculated, many atheletes could be classified as "overweight."

It is sad that government agencies are so deeply in the pocket of industry forces that they can't give out useful advice every once in a while.

Notice that right now, they never say specifically not to eat anything. They emphasize adding more fruits and vegetable to our flawed diets.

We all know that people often lose weight if they have serious health problems. People with cancer usurally end up extremely thin, as do people with heart disease frequently. It is hard to believe they didn't control for these factors.

But the bottom line about this was how could so many people simply choose to accept one study so blindly, despite what hundreds of others studies had shown over the years.

Too many people want to believe something too badly it seems. Faith defeats science, even here at DU.

Ugh.

Next we'll be hearing a study on the health benefits of smoking.

Based on my extensive anecdotal evidence, smoking is a cost-effective way to reduce anxiety. Antismoking laws are the leading cause of workplace violence.

p.s. What are causation and correlation and why do they matter? Are they just more scientific 'proofs' or something?

Good god you couldn't have a more obvious abuse of power.

:eyes:

If anything industry forces impacted the turn around.

Julie Gerberding and her bunch were responsible for the ludicrous '400,000 fat deaths per year' figure that was announced with so much fanfare last year -- and which was partly recanted after someone pointed out some screwy math.

The CDC desperately needs an epidemic. With 63 percent of the US population labeled "overweight", there was a lot of hope that a supposed "obesity epidemic" would be the salvation of public health budgets.

What really angers me about all this is that this nonexistant "epidemic" was promoted as the reason why America could not afford to institute universal healthcare. As it stands now, a bunch of useless public-health scolds are sucking up resources to fight their stupid War on Fat -- while sick people go untreated because there's no money for medicine.


Disgusting. Just another battle in the war waged by the upperclasses against everybody else.

It's far more likely that industry forces had something to do with getting the bogus Flegal study published in the first place. Grocery chains and restaurants have much more power and money than Jenny Craig every could hope for.

The weight loss industry makes billions praying on society's need to obtain an impossible goal. They rely on the fact that people join weight watchers and other programs over and over again because they don't work.

And if anything fast food restaurants are in a simbiotic relationship with the weight loss industry, because for every attempt at weight loss there is usually an accompanying binge.

Is still tiddly winks compared to the food and grocery industry which has worked so hard to push one controversial and now debunked study to the forefront of public consciousness. I know all about the diet industies hijinks, as I've fought it for years. But I am not about to dismiss a public health issue as mere industry hype. The people who've researched this matter, by and large, are not beholden to the industry you speak of. In fact, most of them have fought with it, just as I have, over the years.

And, yeah, the two industries inadvertently play off one another, and they often try to play on one another. Neither is ethical. That much is clear. However, the refutation of this study is not coming from the diet industry. That much is also clear.

Julie Gerberding is the dimwit who said that obesity is a deadlier epidemic than the Black Death of medieval Europe. That's the sort of thing bureaucrats say in hope of achieving the Big Beautiful Budget of their dreams.

The release of the JAMA study made her look like either an idiot or a liar. Gerberding has a vested interest in defending her career, and that's pretty much what she's doing here.

Flegal's research actually did take smoking and disease into account -- and still failed to find any evidence for the supposed physical superiority of the skinny.

In any case, Gerberding's main objection here is incredibly disingenuous. Yes, there are diseases that can cause people to become underweight, and yes, the inclusion of people who are underweight because of medical problems can affect study outcomes. But -- and it's a large, juicy but -- there are also medical conditions and medications that cause weight gain. If you're going to factor out weight-changing conditions for the thin, then -- to be fair -- ya gotta do the same thing for everyone else as well.

That is, assuming you actually want to be fair...

One of the number one symptoms of serious disease is weight loss. Diseases like diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, pancreatic disease, cancer, infectious disease like pneumonia, AIDS, and on and on.

Only a very few medications - lithium, phenobarbital, prednisone - cause weight gain.

I know this study was flawed when it came out and I have confidence in Dr. Gerberding.

Please drop this silly "in denial" business. You don't know me, pal.

Only a very few medications - lithium, phenobarbital, prednisone - cause weight gain.

Woweee -- how's that for disingenuous!

Never mind how frequently these "few" medications are used -- which is the important thing.

Corticosteroids are commonly used medications that are known to cause severe weight gain. The inflammatory diseases and inflammation-complicated injuries that they treat are also very common.

Antipsychotic medications, especially the newer "wonderdrug" atypicals (and older stuff like lithium) have become notorious for fattening up patients.

Actually, any injury or disease that makes movement difficult is likely to promote weight gain due to reduced energy expenditure. I repeat: if you factor out weight-changing conditions for thin people, you have to factor them out for everyone else. Kindly take your thumb off the scale.

I know this study was flawed when it came out and I have confidence in Dr. Gerberding.

I'm sorry to hear that, because Doktor Gerberding is an idiot.

Are you worried about it? It seems to be on your mind.

:eyes:

And the poster I was replying to knows little if anything about my psyche. S/he could simply have said that s/he thought that I was wrong without making an unsupportable claim about my emotional state.

:eyes: right back atcha.

You think you can simply say that the study did something it didn't and everyone should just believe you?

Do you work for the food industry?

Oh, and the weight gain bit was hilarious. That's spin of the utmost sinister character. Who do you work for?

... have nothing to do with how I get my living -- which may be from the food industry, the flying saucer industry, the cowboy boot industry, the guillotine industry, or any other field of endeavor, whether saintly or sinister.

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:shrug: