![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mortality and Fat
Apr. 19th, 2005 07:26 pmA friend doing academic work related to fat people sent me the following AP article:
Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading causes of "preventable death," according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.
The article goes on:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Tuesday that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.
This latest estimate by the CDC puts fatness behind car crashes and guns as the leading causes of "preventable death."
Later in the article the CDC director is quoted as saying that they're not using the new lower figure in its public awareness campaign, and they're not going to scale back its "fight against obesity."
Will this dramatic reassessment make a difference in fat people's lives, in our access to respectful healthcare, in the ways we see ourselves and our bodies, in the context that surrounds us as we move through the world? I hope more than I can say that it does.
Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading causes of "preventable death," according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.
The article goes on:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Tuesday that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.
This latest estimate by the CDC puts fatness behind car crashes and guns as the leading causes of "preventable death."
Later in the article the CDC director is quoted as saying that they're not using the new lower figure in its public awareness campaign, and they're not going to scale back its "fight against obesity."
Will this dramatic reassessment make a difference in fat people's lives, in our access to respectful healthcare, in the ways we see ourselves and our bodies, in the context that surrounds us as we move through the world? I hope more than I can say that it does.