/sci/ - Science & Math

Medically speaking is it a good idea to teach future doctors that telling fatties to lose weight is racist?

https://freebeacon.com/campus/pedagogical-malpractice-inside-ucla-medical-schools-mandatory-health-equity-class/

>Course Objectives
>1. Understand the concepts of race/racism, power, colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism and their manifestations in the history of medical thought, education, practice, and research and shaping the healthcare system overall.

>Pre-lecture material:
>4. Read this article by Marquisele Mercedes
https://pipewrenchmag.com/dismantling-medical-fatphobia/

>Apart from quoted material, this article uses the term “obesity,” the medicalized notion of fatness, in quotes or censored as ob*sity as per fat liberationist conventions that reject the idea that fatness is a disease. The concept of ob*sity is used to exact violence on fat people, and fat activists regard it as a slur.

>It is proven that weight loss is a useless, hopeless endeavor. You are unlikely to lose weight in any permanent way and highly likely to open yourself to the myriad risks associated with weight cycling. The relationship between weight and health is also muddy. People often mention research that suggests that fatness (up to a point) can be protective, but this often only has the effect of scapegoating the fattest among us, the infinifat people who are only acceptable to acknowledge via mocking entertainment. If you decide (or are pressured to) pursue gastric bypass surgery in order to escape fatphobia violence, you may not actually lose weight — for some, the main outcome is disordered eating, an attempt to salvage the benefits of an incredibly harmful and risky procedure. No study measuring the association between weight and health outcomes comes close to appropriately accounting for the impact of fatphobia on an individual’s wellbeing, including how those impacts are likely the worst for the fattest among us.