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To be a bit blunt, the doctors are probably thinking "if you won't take care of your body, why should I?" If someone is so massively overweight that they need
by wyager 10y ago
To be a bit blunt, the doctors are probably thinking "if you won't take care of your body, why should I?"
If someone is so massively overweight that they need to use equipment intended for large animals or industrial scrap, they are putting themselves in an extremely precarious health situation.
- et2o 10y agoDoctors take care of people who don't take care of themselves all the time, everyday. It's part of being a doctor.
- jlarocco 10y agoAnd when those people go to the doctor with complaints related to not taking care of themselves, the doctors tell them they need to stop drinking, smoking, or whatever. Why would obesity be any different?
- jakebasile 10y agoTelling them to correct the initial cause is wholly different than not treating the symptoms or not mitigating damage because "they don't deserve it" or "they can't even take care of themselves".
- jlarocco 10y agoI'm not sure it has anything to do with the patient "deserving it" or not. Nobody wants to put effort into something when somebody else is actively working against it.
- jakebasile 10y agoBig people do not want to be obese, and doctors are paid for their efforts. Nobody sets out with the life goal of being fat.
- __jal 10y agoSo they don't prescribe statins, and just tell people to change their diets, yes? Hold back on insulin until those nasty diabetics stop gulping soda, even the thin ones? They tell people who do physical work to suck up the back pain, because they should have taken care of their body? Your needlessly weird comments about equipment betray your bias, as does your implicit belief that everyone who has a weight issue can do something about it. But even if you can't get past your personal feelings, I'd hope you can see that the rather nasty condemnation and moral judgement implicit in how this line of thinking runs looks pretty awful when applied to other medical conditions.
- wyager 10y agoOn the less straw-man extreme, we also make alcoholics stop drinking before giving them organ transplants, and smokers have to quit before receiving a lung transplant. Medical care is a finite resource, especially in countries where it's publicly funded. We prioritize people who don't destroy their bodies because it's more likely that we'll diagnose them correctly and that a treatment will be successful. The article talks about people who have e.g. joint pain, which is almost certainly caused by their continuous obesity, rather than something like diabetes, which won't go away if they lose weight. > Your needlessly weird comments about equipment betray your bias What are you talking about? Did you even read the article? That's where I got those examples from. > your implicit belief that everyone who has a weight issue can do something about it You caught me; I believe in conservation of energy. > this line of thinking runs looks pretty awful when applied to other medical conditions. You clearly aren't familiar with how medicine actually works. Prioritization and triage are unfortunate facts of life.
- __jal 10y agoBluntly, this discussion makes it pretty clear that asking skinny technical people about medical obesity is pretty close to asking Donald Trump about how to solve crime: get more violent. If it doesn't work, you weren't violent enough. If it does, get more violent, because it is clearly working. Change a few words and you're there. The ignorant certainty the arrogant dismissiveness that comes with it are breathtaking. It is genuinely sad. > You clearly aren't familiar with how medicine actually works. Physician, heal thyself.