Great Editorial from Edwardsville
A great, great little editorial from the Edwardsville [Illinois] Intelligencer that takes the "crisis" to task:
It's a scary concept.
Consider the prospects:
By labeling it a crisis we can divert all sorts of scarce public funds to purging the common person of that debilitating fat around their midriff. We can justify higher taxes for foods which contain whatever substance is deemed at the time to "make you fat." We can foster the increased marginalization of super-sized citizens. We can discriminate, penalize and sanction.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Hispanics: You're Next | Meridia Wins
Posted by paul on July 14, 2004| catrandom |
July 15th, 2004 | Link |
Awesome, indeed; somebody's
Awesome, indeed; somebody's wide awake in Edwardsville! Right on. It's great to read the POV of an editorialist who has a clue.
Clue-possession in this area being especially rare because fatphobia seems equally distributed among political persuasions. Conservatives who don't believe a word the mainstream media says on any other subject will swallow whole (so to speak) the latest "obesity crisis" and diet nonsense and believe we could quit being fat if we just tried hard enough. Meanwhile, liberals who pride themselves on their tolerance jump right in when someone proposes a plan to "fix" us, those apparently intolerable fat folks.
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| wicked |
July 17th, 2004 | Link |
thats a great little
thats a great little editorial-short, to the point and cuts through the crap...
one thing in particular stood out(for me)...the statement that:
"By labeling it a crisis we can divert all sorts of scarce public funds to purging the common person of that debilitating fat around their midriff."
I work in afield closely related to the medical field and of late there has been a lot of talk about a spike in the amount of "obesity research" being done..and its true I have noticed the increase in my University, of the number of labs focussing on this "research"..
The TRULY SCARY part is this:
a few years back some key people in our Med School got together to put this grant together where they would get this huge sum of money from the NIH and NSF and there was a breakdown of the various fields of research it would fund...
Cancer (for obvious reasons ) was to get the bulk of the money -~65%, followed by AIDS getting ~10-15% and the remaining going into various others (I believe 'Obesity' was to get a scant 2% of the funds)...
They got the grant but NOW they are trying to put together a petition to rework those numbers (after they have the money) and they want to BRING DOWN the money Cancer gets to about 35% and 'obesity' would get ~25%!!!!!!!
Are these people mad-taking money from a legitimate field of research like that to this 'Obesity' crap??!!!
I have even been seeing ads for volunteers for some of these studies... I read one at the bus-stop today where "normal" participants will be required to go to the hospital and fast for two days and then give up blood and tissue samples...
and other "obese" people , defined in the ad as > 180lbs (no height/fitness level specification) go to the hospital for 4 days and take some kind of Growth Hormone..
Oh and the financial compensation would be "upto $1000"...
so thats where the tax-payers money is going these days..
sheesh..*eye roll*
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