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Super-sizing Statistics
The accuracy of the following statements is not
only personally important to your health, it may be
politically important to your freedom. Which of the
statements you believe is also likely to affect
such intimate issues as your body image and how you
choose to feed your family.
#1: Obesity and inactivity kill 400,000
Americans a year, making them the www.thedoctorslounge.net/medlounge/articles/obesity_death/
second leading cause of preventable death in the
US, next only to smoking.
#2: Obesity and inactivity kill 26,000 Americans
a year, www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/diet.fitness/04/20/obesity.deaths.ap/
making
them less lethal than relatively unknown diseases
such as www.mindfully.org/Health/CausesOfDeathUS-1999CDC.htm
Nephritis
and Septicemia.
The first statement creates panic; the second,
concern. Without diminishing the desirability of a
healthy diet and exercise, which reaction do the
facts really support: a public panic with calls for
political intervention, or a reason why individuals
should reconsider reaching for that second
donut?
Don't look to the Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) for guidance. The CDC seems determined to
create confusion, not clarity on the statistics.
Over the past year, the CDC has provided www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/w/wascher/2005/wascher043005.htm
numbers
that support both statements, contradictory though
they be.
In March 2004, a study co-authored by CDC
director Dr. Julie Gerberding claimed that, in
2000, obesity and physical inactivity killed
400,000 Americans; that is, obesity caused more
than 16 percent of all deaths in the U.S. The CBS
headline, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/09/health/main604956.shtml
"Americans Eat Themselves To Death", was typical of
media coverage. Time/ABC News announced www.time.com/time/2004/obesity/index.html
a Summit on Obesity (June 2-4).
Political reaction was equally alarmist. Surgeon
General Richard Carmona declared, "As we look to
the future and where childhood obesity will be in
20 years...it is every bit as threatening to us as
is the terrorist threat we face today." Using words
like "epidemic", policy makers rushed to debate on
everything from "fat taxes" on junk food to the
regulation of fast-food advertising, from Medicare
covering obesity-related surgeries to banning
www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm?headline=2760
sodas from schools.
Some voices advised skepticism. Steve Milloy, in
his FOX column www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,113975,00.html
"Junk Science" (03/12/04), pointed out that "the
CDC produced its estimates with a statistical ruse
called 'attributable risk' -- the fearmongers'
method of choice for alarming the public with large
body counts. Attributable risk could be the poster
child for the saying, 'garbage in, garbage out'."
In other words, science accurately views obesity as
a contributing factor in death -- or, even more
loosely, as a correlation -- not as a causative
one.
Meanwhile, the
www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/2535
Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) -- a
self-described "nonprofit organization dedicated to
protecting consumer choices and promoting common
sense" -- called attention to severe methodological
and mathematical flaws in the CDC study.
On November 23rd, the Wall Street Journal
www.ajcp.com/headlines/news/200411231.html
reported that, according to an internal CDC
investigation, the "widely quoted" study on obesity
contained "statistical errors" that inflated the
death toll by "tens of thousands" -- specifically,
by 80,000 or 20%. In www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/09/health/main604956.shtml
November, the CBS headline (and others) changed to
"Obesity Study Overstated Effects." But the 400,000
figure seemed cemented into government policy and
public awareness. It is difficult to unring an
alarm bell.
Then, on April 19th, the Houston Chronicle
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3142605
reported that the CDC "estimated today that packing
on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a
year…As recently as January, the CDC came up
with an estimate 14 times higher." No wonder, the
consumerfreedom.com/article_detail.cfm?article=161
CCF concluded "CDC stands for Center for Damage
Control".
CCF takes an extreme view: it argues that CDC's
super-sized statistics were politically motivated
and self-consciously false. (Others boomerang
www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/05/01/groups_ads_take_issue_with_cdc_statistics/
the same charges of dishonesty back at the CCF.)If
true, however, the CCF's accusations would place
some CDC officials in the same category as Eric T.
Poehlman, a top obesity researcher who did work at
the University of Vermont. On March 18th, 2005, the
Boston Globe www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/03/18/researcher_admits_fraud_in_grant_data?mode=PF
reported Poehlman had "fabricated data in 17
applications for federal grants to make his work
seem more promising, helping him win nearly $3
million in government funding." Poehlman
acknowledged making up "research results from 1992
to 2002, including findings published in medical
journals that overstated the effect of menopause on
women's health."
Apart from the profit (or funding) motive,
political bias may be playing a role at the CDC and
with other obesity research. In January 1998, the
editors of the New England Journal of Medicine cast
a skeptical eye on the "300,000 deaths" from
obesity per year figure and www.his.com/~sepp/weekwas/dec28_jan3.html
warned against a growing trend; namely, that "the
medical campaign against obesity may have to do
with a tendency to medicalize behavior we do not
approve of."
Medicalized behavior is behavior that government
deems proper to control. If the food going into
your mouth is an addiction or an epidemic, then
your diet ceases to be a personal choice and
becomes an issue of public safety. The lunch you
pack for your children becomes a matter of public
policy.
Accordingly, which of the two opening statements
you chose to believe is not the only 'weighty'
question. It is quickly followed by "what political
importance should be attached to statistics about
fat?"
I believe people are responsible for their own
weight and their own food choices. Government
intervention is a wrong and a dangerous option, on
several grounds. Just one of them: individuals
should be assuming, not relinquishing personal
control over their own health. We should down-size
government's interest in what we eat and right-size
the statistics it's feeding us.
©2007, Wendy
McElroy
* * *
Wendy
McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com
and a research fellow for The Independent Institute
in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of
many books and articles, including her latest book,
Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the
21st Century. She lives with her husband in
Canada. E-Mail.
Also, see her daily blog at www.zetetics.com/mac
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