fattypatties

Revisiting the Numbers--Still Not Good

Stephen wrote a comment on Sandy's post regarding a comparison of American WLS deaths and American Iraq war deaths questioning the mortality rates she presented for WLS. He points out that she used the rates for men rather than the overall rates, which inflates the rates because the rate among men is higher than women.

Sandy has kindly revisited the numbers and has made the following observations:

I sincerely apologize that in my rush my numbers were imprecise. I went through the study and tallied the exact numbers of each age group, gender and death rates. The numbers are still incredibly painful. I went to a bariatric surgical conference this past Saturday and was given the latest 2005 stats published by the American Society of Bariatric Surgeons, which now estimates 173,000 surgeries performed for 2005.

Anyway, about 8,304 innocent people lost their lives in 2005 due to bariatric surgeries. (Of course it's more considering most die slow deaths from years of nutritional deficits and complications, but we'll disregard those for this exercise.)

According to CNN, there have been 2211 casualties in Iraq as of January 15, 2006 (covering nearly 3 years).

The comparisons still stand in shuttering accuracy: Bariatiric surgeries killed two to five times more Americans in one year than the entire 3-year Iraq War. In fact, more than the Iraq War, Persian Gulf War, Afghan War, Spanish American War, and War of 1812 combined!

In just one year, bariatric atrocities resulted in eleven times more innocent American lives lost than from the Iraq War.

While I place equal tragedy to men and women's lives, of those estimated 8304 deaths, 6294 were women -- our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters -- and 2010 were men -- our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. All were senseless.

This is only a nonissue for people who don't value the lives of people they are prejudiced against. Pure and simple.

I hate it when I'm right!

This from Sandy Szwarc after I wrote "people died last year in America from attempts to lose weight (WLS and diet pills) than in Iraq" as part of my exchange with Fred.

(BTW, I should clarify that I meant more Americans died -- and that was an important distinction. A lot more Iraqis have died in the war and I was remiss not be clear on that point.)

From Sandy:

I did some quick math and here is the support for the death stats:

According to CNN, there have been 2211 casualties in Iraq as of January 15, 2006 (covering nearly 3 years). [click on "death toll comparisons"]

The American Society of Bariatric Surgeons (ASBS) estimates 150,000 weight loss surgeries were performed in 2005. The latest JAMA report found the post-op death rate the first year is 5.6% ages 35-44; 7.7% ages 45-54 (those are the most common ages for these surgeries). The death rate goes way up for older people -- 51% for those >75 years, but we'll disregard those and be conservative and just use the younger age figures.

That means that between 8,400 and 11,550 innocent, healthy people died in just one year in the hands of bariatric butchers*.

So bariatiric surgeries killed 200% to 500% more Americans in one year than the entire Iraq War. In fact, more than the Iraq War, Persian Gulf War, Afghan War, Spanish American War, and War of 1812 combined!

Not to minimize any loss of lives, but God, looking at these numbers, the fact that any news organization thinks that their petty political infighting stories are more important betrays an extreme fat bigotry and myopic Washington beltway viewpoint.

*(of course it's more considering most die slow deaths from years of nutritional deficits and complications, but we'll ignore that, too, so as not to appear to be "piling on." And comparisons of the annual death rates would be even more outrageous, given the wars lasted for years.

Why I feel abandoned by the left or, yep, we're irrelevant

So I sent out e-mails to a bunch of Air America Shows (below is from the M&M Show here in Phoenix)-- here is the only response so far and, well, I can't make a better case for why I don't bother much with the Left any more...


=======================================================

M and M wrote:

Pattie,

This is Fred, from the M and M Show on weekends. We take on the pharmaceutical industry regularly and routinely.

You wrote: "Every time an Air America on-air spokesperson uncritically discusses health or weight loss programs, they are contributing to this invasion of privacy and control mechanisms.'

I have never heard this, even once, from a personality on Air America.

I think the lack of outrage you cite is simply: Bigger fish to fry. Our country is being stolen daily.

While Air America may have commercials with which you disagree, I don't hear pharma apologists on the air.

Try listening to our show. We take on pharma and body-image scum any time we can.


Fred



====================================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: Pattie Thomas
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 9:22 AM
To: M and M
Subject: RE: Ultimate Rights to Privacy


Fred,

I do listen to your show often and, yes, I have heard you take on pharmaceutical industry at times -- however, I've also heard diet ads as sponsors to these takes. Am I to believe that your sponsorship isn't affecting your content? That seems a bit naive and I don't think you'd let Fox get away with such a defense.

I have not heard anything on your show about how this domestic war is a way that our country is being stolen -- fat people have been compared to terrorist by the Bush adminstration and more people died last year in America from attempts to lose weight (WLS and diet pills) than in Iraq. Now these policies are becoming the basis for employee discrimination. This is part of the big fish!

BTW, I have respectfully disagree with you regarding never hearing any Air America radio person uncritically discuss health or weight loss. Randy Rhodes goes on and on about her weight loss on her show. And Al Franken seems obsessed with Rush Limbaugh's fatness. I don't think anyone on Air America would tolerate a critique of rightie JC Watts based upon his skin color and yet it is perfectly okay to use prejudicial language to enhance other wise legitimate criticism of Limbaugh. (And yes, I have sent the same e-mail to them that I sent to you -- I contacted every show I've listened to on Air America Phoenix.)

Fat prejudice goes unmarked in the speech on Air America all the time. I may be wrong but I think I've even heard you guys call people "big fat" whatevers. This is part of the problem.

Fat prejudice feeds the pharmaceutical rhetoric that allows them to make big profits at our expense.

Those are the dots I am encouraging you to connect. I never said that you were overtly apologizing for the pharms -- I said that you aren't connecting the dots that support them. That's the "uncritical" part of this.

I just have this bad feeling that so much of our personal freedoms are being eroded while we pay attention to the "big fish" that even if we elect democrats to the house and senate next year and win back our government, that the corporate powers will be so strong, it won't make that much difference in our daily lives.

I hope for more smarts in the smart person's radio than to simply be the designated opposition to an agenda set by the righties.

Having said all that, congrats on being the only lefties who have ever responded to my concerns. I'm not wholly satisfied with the response, but I am impressed that you took the time to dialogue, which is a big step forward in my opinion.

Pattie



===========================================================================

M and M wrote:

Pattie,

How dare you. In no way does the advertising affect what we say. I do not believe I've ever said "big fat" anything on the air.

And, making weight the same as color is just not honest. Sorry, but these are not at all the same.

Clearly, this is an emotional issue for you, but you have no right to accuse me of altering what I say on the air for a sponsor unless YOU HAVE SOME EVIDENCE OF THIS. Do you have any evidence of this?

If you're not being heard, perhaps you should attack less and think more.


Fred


===============================================================


-----Original Message-----
From: Pattie Thomas [mailto:pattie_thomas@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 9:50 AM
To: M and M
Subject: RE: Ultimate Rights to Privacy


I don't think I've attacked at all.

Even if you are not directly alterating what you say on the air -- your ads are a part of your message. Being sponsored by something does convey a message whether you intend it or not. Your content is affected and undermined by your sponsors. It is the nature of communication and mass media.

I said that "I could be wrong" regarding the "big fat" comment and will take at face value your assertion that you have not said so directly and am pleased that you are offended by a suggestion as I think that it is something that is offensive.

Dismissing me as "emotional" rather than checking the sources I provided is a low blow, however and one that women have endured for a long time.

Do you even want to find out if I might have a rational basis for what I am saying or are you just that sure you know it all? I am not speaking emotionally. I am speaking personally, but I am also speaking professionally. I have a PHD in sociology. I speak all over the country on these issues. I have a long history of left activism. Dismissing me as a nut without even checking out facts is certainly easy to do, but then that is nature of prejudice isn't it?

The link to the list I provided has a number of "thin" people who are experts in their field who have studied this for a long time. I don't mind you deciding that this isn't worth your time to check out, but I do mind your suggestion that I'm "attacking" and "emotional" when I have offered evidence and sources.

Finally, consider for a moment that weight might be just like race. No effective way to lose weight has been discovered. Most weight loss efforts have led to a number of iatrogenic effects on those who have tried to lose weight. Being heavy runs in families and has definite genetic aspects. Several studies have shown that fat people and thin people do not eat that differently from each other and that fat people who exercise are healthier than thin people who don't (contact Paul Ernsberger and Glen Gaessar on the .pdf i linked, if you want specifics on the evidence). Diet, exercise and weight are not as linked as the diet-pharmaceutical industrial complex would have you believe and that "lifestyle" link is the only basis for deciding that "weight" is a different matter.

If being big is a physical characteristic that is beyond the permanent control of the person who is big (and by the way skin color is controllable -- that is what "passing" has been all about) -- how is the medicalization of fatness not any different from the long history of medicalizing race? We are talking about making decisions about people on the basis of how they look and those decisions echo years of discimination on the basis of race ("ugly" "lazy" "undisciplined" "stupid" etc.)

I am not attacking you. I am suggesting to you that you are acting upon information that needs critical study. I am asking you to consider that your beliefs about weight and health are being manipulated by economic and political interests that benefit from your believing that being fat is always bad and always controllable. I am asking you to connect the dots to the growing ways in which corporate interests are using these beliefs to justify invasion of privacy -- the very issues that the left are concerned about with the current supreme court nomination.

You guys are so good at looking at the underlying messages and connections that pervade so much of the mass media that it saddens me you can't see where the domestic battle is being fought and won.

I'm not attacking you. I'm challenging you.

Come on -- rise to the occasion -- I know that you've got it in you.

--Pattie



================================================================

M and M wrote:


From: "M and M"
To: "Pattie Thomas"
Subject: RE: Ultimate Rights to Privacy
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 10:04:59 -0700


Pattie,

I have not read your email all the way through.

I feel I have much bigger fish to fry, period. If you find this issue important, stick with it.

I have no say over who our sponsors are, and I put "weight-discrimination" way, way down the list of important topics.

I do not wish to use airtime for this issue, unless a caller brings it up. It is very far down my list of important topics.

And, who has the time to read the voluminous emails you send?

I have one life, and one show, and weight is simply not an issue about which I care enough to change either.

Fred

Letter to Air America Shows

I have little hope of this being effective, but here's a letter I wrote to the Lefties at Air America (both nationally and locally to Phoenix).

I listen to Air America in Phoenix every time I'm in my car and I have to tell you I am growing more and more discouraged every day.

It is amazing to me that such indepth analysis is being applied to the war machine abroad with little attention being given to a war that is being waged on Americans through the ever tightening hold employers are gaining on the private lives of their employees.

I'm old enough to remember the arguments against drug testing when such things became routine in the 1980s. We now have employers testing employees for tobacco use (a legal substance) on a regular basis. Under the guise of "decreasing health care costs," employers are free to fire people on the basis of what they look like and what they do in their spare time.

In 1996, former Surgeon General and well-know "rightie," C. Everett Koop, MD, called for a "war on obesity" that has grown into what may be the only domestic health care policy the Bush administration espouses. This war, like all wars, is designed to exact domestic control over the citizenry. It has little to do with our health or well-being.

As the senate democrats question Alito on his position regarding presidential powers, domestic spying and abortion rights, no one seems to see the larger picture from which these issues originate. We are not dealing with idealogues who want to impart Christian values -- we are dealing with a group of elitists who want to infuse themselves into every aspect of our private lives in order to control us. Why? So they can sell us more stuff and steal from us what they can't entice us to buy.

The real danger is not coming from the NSA, though certainly spying on the citizenry is reprehensible. It is coming from the employers who increasingly justify discrimination, lower pay, punitive health care policies and invasion of employee privacy on the basis of economics. Corporations conduct domestic spying legally every day and their power to do so is growing.

This invasion of privacy is undermining the gains made under civil rights.

From the January 11, 2006 Christian Monitor:

"The color of your eyes, the car you drive, and your weight may all sound like private matters. But in many states, employers can take those facts - and many more - into account when they decide whether to hire or fire you."

"Some groups are protected on the federal level: Employers can't discriminate against workers based on age, gender, race, disability, national origin, or religion. But unless state law says differently, all other characteristics are fair game, including your political leanings and even what you wear outside of work."

It is upsetting to see how little the Left cares about this and how uncritical they are about the industries that are setting this up in our country.

It is also upsetting to see how much Air America is contributing to these industries. Every diet company and pharmaceutical company advertising on Air America wants employers to promote wellness programs that are not designed to make us well but rather designed to keep us in our place.

Every time an Air America on-air spokesperson uncritically discusses health or weight loss programs, they are contributing to this invasion of privacy and control mechanisms.

An important propoganda to encourage in this "war" effort is to create disatisfaction with our bodies. In the same way that fear is needed to keep Americans' support of the war on terror and the war in Iraq, the more insecure we become with our health and bodies, the more likely we are to submit to the invasions of privacy regarding our health.

Is it that hard for liberals to believe that the medical and pharmaceutical corporations have lied to us about health for their own profit?

Liberals can connect the dots between Haliburton and the war on Iraq, but they can't seem to see that diet and weight loss advice might have political motivations.

Yes, I am a fat woman, and yes, I have a vested interest in ending the stigma and prejudice I face. But I am also a victim of the diet-pharmaceutical industrial complex. I literally dieted my way into disability because of the radical and not so radical ways I tried to fight my own biology. I have studied the data and the fact is our government and the corporate interests protected by our government are using fat people and the "war on obesity" to erode the privacy rights of all people.

Where is the liberal outrage that the CDC once said that 400,000 people were dying of "obesity" each year only to find out that any justifiable figure would be closer to 25,000? Where is the liberal outrage that in spite of this latest scientific evidence that the CDC continues to do its propoganda compaign as if obesity is a leading cause of death? I hear outrage at the attack on science all the time and yet no one liberal seems the least bit concerned that such a distortion in a major public policy effort remains.

Where is the liberal outrage that people's perfectly healthy stomach's are being mutilated each year through weight loss surgery? Liberals cry about African practices of genital mutilation and debate cultural freedom versus women's rights with a critical eye and yet no one on the left seems the least bit concerned that this expensive and untested medical practice has more basis in culture than science.

Where is the liberal outrage that billions of dollars are being spent every year to develop drugs that are killing people in the name of weight loss? These drugs are fast-tracked through FDA hearings in much the same way that the Bush administration has ensured appointees the least amount of resistance in gaining approval. The incompentancy of FEMA makes liberal news, but not the cronyism of the FDA.

Please, at least, look into this. Examine your own prejudices and ask yourself if you are not accepting at face value such "truisms" as "Americans are too fat" or "Obesity Kills" on the basis of cultural beliefs rather than scientific evidence.

Signs of emerging facism are everywhere right now. Please don't miss this one. It is an important erosion of our basic freedoms and it deserves attention from the left.

If you want to explore this topic with the critical eye it deserves, please feel free to contact me and I would be happy to provide you with resources and sources.

You can also contact a number of experts who have reviewed the data and are convinced that a better public policy is needed. A comprehensive list can be found at

http://www.pearlsong.com/HAES%20Experts.pdf


thank you,

Pattie Thomas, Ph.D.
author, "Taking Up Space"

I hate nights like this. I am exhausted and yet I can't sleep. I hurt all over. I'm depressed. I know its been nearly three months since I last wrote here. I don't have the energy to explain why. I just needed to come back by and reclaim the space as it were.

I have a mixture of absolute hope and total and complete despair this morning. Does that sound too dramatic? The weird part is that it is mixed with boredom. I am bored with the holidays and the traditions and the rituals.

Maybe all these feelings of joy, hatred, fear, boredom, hope and love are just the ravishes of hormones. It turns out I'm probably in menopause. I have many of the symptoms. I'm finding it aggrevating. I haven't had a period of ten years since my hysterectomy and so I haven't given much thought to the emotional and physical roller coaster that used to me my cycle. Now my ovaries have caught up with the rest of the plumbing and I am back in throes of ups and downs. Except this time they come with hair growing in places I don't want hair to grow and hot flashes and bladder control problems and dryness and gum and teeth problems. Rather than a life changing experience--a transition to a new stage, I just feel like my body is falling apart.

I wish this culture offered more wisdom on what to do when the body goes through this. I have found a considerable lack of knowledge.

I hate to admit that I also find myself fearing aging and death more these days. I don't like it. I wanted to be graceful and spritual about all this but in truth I'm just really, really annoyed. There is so much I want to accomplish and the time to do so is waning. And, of course, being disabled and dealing with chronic illnesses complicates everything.

As does lack of health insurance, lack of steady income and lack of a medical system that I can trust.

Okay, okay, it isn't really fair to post such a negative post after not writing for so long.

I promise I'll post something about all the positives (and there are some) soon. In the meantime, I'm going to try to go back to bed and get some sleep.

Happy fucking new year.