Ministering to Bodies does not Equal Ownership of People

A few weeks ago a certain health authority announced that it will breathalyse smokers to make sure they've stopped smoking for 8 weeks before they can be referred for assessment for "non-urgent surgery".

They said the changes were being brought in after 85% of people who responded to a public consultation agreed that smokers should be required to quit before being referred. 

This transparent attempt at buck passing shows the architects of this know they are in the wrong, they don't want to own it. Instead they try to stick it on the usual targets, the public.

Smoking is a habit. It is not addictive, it's is not even particularly faddictive-folks still woefully underestimate the power of the human mind in real life.

Smoking has never been more self-selecting than it is today, so if anyone wants to truly make further inroads into the numbers remaining, they need to come up with techniques that actually work for those who smoke and resist urges to indulge in power games expressions punitive fee fees or crackpot vigilante justice.

To use that brilliant-as-it-is-skewif expression, check the optics: anti-smoking professionals targeting people for; reaching for a cigarette-reaching for a cigarette-reaching for a cigarette, by reaching for self righteous shock tactics-reaching for self righteous shock tactics-reaching for self righteous shock tactics.

If phoned in anti-ism equalled expertise in the formation and cessation of habits, that wouldn't have happened now would it?

If health professionals and bureaucrats wish to truly engage in public health, they need to engage with healthy behaviours to bring about that end. They can do their; "Bad for you, bad for you act, in an emergency, in the initial stages of any real or perceived health crisis- if they've not thought of anything better. After the initial loosely aligned are shaken off though, they'd better put some effort into how to actually alter what compelling about what they're complaining about.

With real demonstrations of efficacy, that can be repeated, not assertion or pseudo-science statistically massaged 'studies', or other so called "evidence-based" hocus-poci. No stupid chewing gum or horrible-as-they-are ineffectual drugs "support" either. If you are criticising using material things, why is that all you've got? If you think the answer to problems is things, what are you looking down your nose at?

Why aren't you more concerned about how to alter the behaviour and performance of your mind/body, using your mind/body? That is a real anti-thesis of habitual consumption of material objects.

If that sounds like a tall order, that's the sort of feeling you invoke in your targets.

In the past Public health was honourable and progressive. It improved society and was led by knowledge such as an understanding of the true value of hygiene and of the nature and transmission of disease.

Public health must again be about raising the health of the populace, not a pretext to assaulting mental health, inducing self hatred, creating social/moral hierarchies, or a cover for weird politics/ morality social engineering and the vaunting of one's own personal hatreds. 

Incidentally, no cure-all but smokers or trying to be ex-smokers should consider making a practise of yogic style or other breathing exercises. Even that famous warm up stretch where you take deep breaths as you raise your arms from your sides into the air- really open your chest [it's famous but I can't find a link.] And when you lower your arms whilst exhaling, really empty your lungs-without strain- and pause before taking another breath.

This won't suit everyone but it's worth a try. If your body knows its going to get some invigorating breaths, that might weaken that aspect of the attraction of fags, just don't bring that to smoking!

I can hardly finish without mentioning;

The CCGs also require obese patients to reduce their weight by 10% over nine months or reduce their BMI (body mass index) to less than 30, whichever is greater, before being referred for non-urgent surgery.

Again, whomever wrote; "reduce their weight" knows the only means made available for that-CRIWL is harmful and doesn't work. Euphemise away, you are not even fooling yourselves. Effectively this is seeking to force people to starve off weight against their will. It's seeking to mandate the ceaseless repetition of self harm and self abuse.  

Let's refresh on medical ethics;

• Respect for autonomy – the patient has the right to refuse or choose their treatment. (Voluntas aegroti suprema lex.)
• Beneficence – a practitioner should act in the best interest of the patient. (Salus aegroti suprema lex.)
• Non-maleficence – to not be the cause of harm. Also, "Utility" - to promote more good than harm
• Justice – concerns the distribution of scarce health resources, and the decision of who gets what treatment (fairness and equality). (Iustitia.)

That's a fail on all four and more.

Fat people have taken the initiative, we have done the dieting, that's how we know the results are not satisfactory to anyone.

Patronising nonsense about how people need 'support' to impersonate anorexia, be damned, this is a medical dispute.

There's an obvious vacancy here for science that seeks only to properly understand and manipulate metabolic function. That doesn't concentrate on pointless categorising of people by weight as if being above or below their arbitrary lines makes your bodily functions unrelated to each other.

Look at what that has produced. 

If medical professionals et al want to continue their blocking of real science that actually works, and promotion of pseudo-science that doesn't, they need to explain their motivation for this. They need to become accountable for the outcome.

Either way, doctors don't own fat or any other people. They can't tell us black is white and white is black or try to press us to support their science fiction.

I repeat, fat people have always wanted to slim, we have been prevented by the lack of proper method. Medics et al can only continue to bypass that for so long.

"Obesity scientists" as others choose the area of knowledge they wish to pursue, which is their right. That doesn't co-incide with the needs of those they treat as their personal quarry. No-one signed up to be their puppets, we signed on for altering weight/metabolic function in good faith. That has not been provided and is not on offer so that is that.

Neither they nor medics nor society is owed anything by fat people. We've done what we can with what we've been given.

Nor for the record, is mutilation of the stomach any more a viable option than smoking yourself slim.