Posts Tagged ‘bias’

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. That’s the stigma-laden medical terminology for a condition also known as hepatic steatosis. This is a chronic disease that most often goes undetected, until it progresses to the inflamed state of hepatitis. But then it gets serious. The inflammation progresses to fibrosis. Liver failure or liver cancer can be the end […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the obesity epidemic once again into the spotlight, revealing that obesity is no longer a disease that harms just in the long run but one that can have acutely devastating effects. New studies and information confirm doctors’ suspicion that this virus takes advantage of a disease that our current U.S. […]

Oddly enough, obesity can be a bit of an abstraction. Everybody thinks they know all about it. But in truth, the smartest people who study know how little we know. At the opening of ObesityWeek 2020, though, all that abstract science came face to face with humanity. Perhaps more than we’ve ever seen before, the […]

The New York Times seems to think that even our refrigerators are polarized. Let’s just say they have a bias that favors polarization. Political agitation is good for their business model – just as it is for Fox News. But seriously, the Times collected more than a thousand images of refrigerators through a mobile phone […]

We understand. Surgery is daunting. Bias against people living with obesity is rampant. Some friends and family will criticize. Some doctors will discourage. Health plans often make it hard. So many people feel reluctance about seeking bariatric surgery. But a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reminds us. This is not right. […]

The talk about obesity in the UK is drifting away from a full and constructive view. Instead, it has moved toward a more narrow view of personal responsibility. These findings come from a new analysis by Paul Baker and colleagues. Over ten years following the landmark Foresight Report, reporting about obesity in the British press […]

Coronavirus fatigue. Many people were tired of thinking constantly about this virus until our president seized our attention on Friday with the news that he has it. Suddenly we have renewed energy for this subject. And one sidebar to this topic is the president’s risk for severe symptoms. “Trump is 74, male and obese,” says […]

We are in a season where identity is right out front. Everywhere you turn, people are declaring what they stand for and who they’ll vote for. We see banners, little garden flags, even a pickup-sized flag tacked on to a bike by a scrappy old man pedaling furiously down the street. We humans seem driven […]

The scientific literature on childhood obesity is a bit dodgy in places. Lots of well-meaning people do studies to prove a point rather than discover hard truths. Obesity evokes emotion and stigma, especially for children. Because stigma is in play, scientific rigor can take second place. In scientific journals, papers about childhood obesity can appear […]

Back in February we complained about “a near complete failure of transparency in drug safety decision making” by FDA. Our complaint had to do with taking lorcaserin (Belviq) off the market. Today, FDA took a step toward a bit more transparency. In the New England Journal of Medicine, senior FDA officials explained their thinking about […]