(no subject)

Thought-provoking, at least to my fat self:

Consider this: from the perspective of a profit-maximising medical and pharmaceutical industry, the ideal disease would be one that never killed those who suffered from it, that could not be treated effectively, and that doctors and their patients would nevertheless insist on treating anyway. Luckily for it, the American health care industry has discovered (or rather invented) just such a disease. It is called "obesity".

I had an interesting conversation about this topic with boojum when she visited last weekend --- how being obese/overweight is correlated with a lot of other things that affect overall health at least as much as body weight/body fat, and in particular it's a "disease" of poverty. It's not polite to say "ewww, poor people" but it is considerably more acceptable to say "ewww, fat people". And no self-respecting United States Surgeon General would dare address "the poverty epidemic" as a public health crisis.... oops, that's my cynicism showing again.

Anyway, I'm really just reading Arts and Letters Daily to stall on cleaning out my office and working on my Sundance application, so I'll shut up now.