Campos comparing apples and oranges
If there were such a thing as an “obesity denier,” Rocky Mountain News columnist Paul Campos would be the poster boy. His latest attempt to promote overweight as healthy (“Who do you trust?” Aug. 21) has a major flaw.
Since he’s a lawyer, perhaps he didn’t think of it. If you don’t work in health care, you wouldn’t understand the issues. Or perhaps he deliberately forgot to mention it: The whole point of all the expensive prescription drugs, surgical interventions and treatments used to treat lifestyle diseases in obese people is to keep the patient alive.
Comparing overweight people on multiple drugs to normal- weight people who do not have lifestyle diseases is a false comparison. Of course, this suggests the question: Is death the only adverse health outcome?
Comparing the “health” and quality of life of obese patients on drugs to non-obese active people is too fuzzy. It can’t be done in a statistically meaningful way, but it would be the only truly meaningful comparison.
Donna Feldman, Louisville
Yes there is a problem with severe obiesety (?) . But are we not looking at a bigger problem? If the health care industry is so worried about peoples wieght then why did they lobby to give handicapped privlages to the overwieght. Would it not make more sense for them to have to walk the parking lot distance instead of parking up front?
Is the health care industry trying to collect some money in frivolous lawsuits against fast food. Trying to dictate how people eat , and what they eat. Why has recess been all but removed from schools. How come there is no huge outcry in child obesity, stemming from over usage of video games.
My next question is who determines what is an acceptable wieght? I work out four times a week, am a former active Marine, but according to the standard proportional charts am 40 pounds over wieght. At 5' 8", 220 I am considered obiese.Even though i still run every other day.
So who is going to set the standards?
Posted by on August 28, 2007 07:00 AMDonna:
I must take issue with your statement, it should read as follows; The whole point of all the expensive prescription drugs, surgical interventions and treatments used to treat lifestyle diseases in obeses people is to increase the profits of big pharmaceutical companies and the lawyers who protect their special interests. The survival of the patient is a good secondary consequence.
And, posted at 7:00Am:
It is the the same big pharmaceutical companies that are behind the efforts to make obesesity unacceptable, Why? Because they are the ones who produce all the high priced drugs they alledge are a cure for it. Placing the blame on fast food and trans fat is just a way of promoting that effort. And by the way, why is it that the evils of trans fats take center stage when the much more dangerous saturated fat is left alone? All you need to do to answer that question is follow the money trail.
Posted by Allen Campbell on August 28, 2007 08:15 AMI just wonder why anyone would ever read the Compos column. Definately a waste of ink.
Posted by Jake on August 28, 2007 09:03 AMI read Campos because I never find a misspelled word such as in Jake's one sentence with two in it.
Deicide Corner:
Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus,
With clouds of mist,
And, like the boy who lops
The thistles' heads,
Disport with oaks and mountain-peaks,
Yet thou must leave
My earth still standing;
My cottage too, which was not raised by thee;
Leave me my hearth,
Whose kindly glow
By thee is envied.
Too long: Six more stanzas follow by Goethe talking about Zeus punishing Prometheus for giving fire to man. He chained Pro to the cliff and every day his liver was eaten by fowl and regenerated at night continuing for an eternity like in J.C. and Allah with their lake of fire: Hell.
Campos must have been a quota minority that the News had to hire because I cannot see any other reason for this hack to be writing the nonsensical editorials he submits week after week. I would not mind a type-o in his writings if he really had some merit to his mediocre scribblings.
I see Mr. Grimes is trying to awe us with his Walt Whitman like and unnecessary endless boring poetry again. I read one line and I've read it all. "He's a poet But don't know it, but his feet show it! How's that! short and sweet. I guess it takes all kinds.
Posted by Campos Compost on August 28, 2007 12:46 PMDon't pick on Richard. All societies are required to have abstract philosophers and pundits in their midst to measure their own relative sanity against in a effort to see if we rise to, or fall short of, our potential; even our humble RMN blog society.
Posted by on August 28, 2007 04:36 PMA Grimes Groupie I presume.
The Village has always been full of these nut cases like Allen Ginsberg and their writings do not amount to a "Hill of Beans" and have always been source of needless confusion and a blight to the societies they are trying to influence.
"Humble RMN blog society "
Now thats rich!
You do live up do your name, Campos Compost; "a mixed manure, esp. of organic origin". It's wonderful that there are so any enlightened and intellectually superior folks like you on these boards. It just proves that the rest of us are not worthy to be within the area of illumination generated by heat coming out of your pompous ass. Denigrating others in defense of your positions simply substantiates the weakness of those positions. If your arguments had any validity you wouldn't have to be in attack mode all the time.
That's ok, cold compost, you do have an entertainment value and you do nudge the undecided to a more leftist position out of revulsion. So, keep up the good, work; don't let me down by forgetting to attack me in your own defense.
KCW
Posted by on August 29, 2007 10:13 AM