Should we even treat people like this on the NHS?

[youngmafbog]

Apart from getting the weight of that is?

This is now getting rediculous. People still starving in the world and yet we have these monsters.

Dont get me wrong, I am no slim jim but getting to this size then expecting others to pay dearly for your actions is becoming nuts and needs to stop.

http://www.thesun.co....o-scan-fat-Brits.html

[B00]

Are you suggesting we shouldn't treat people because they're fat?

So if they break their arms for example you's prefer they were untreated??

[Baldric]

They should have a gauge like an airline uses for hand luggage at hospital entrances, if you don't fit through it, you don't get in!

[Mattk]

Its no different to someone who has drank or smoked themselves to illness. We can't just turn our backs.

Its easy to point but to some people eating is an addiction and needs treating as such.

[HowardKennitby]

Perhaps the zoos could earn some money by staging the occasional exhibition of Homo adiposeae undergoing medical examination.

[boxtops]

The chances are if they are that overweight, treatment will be difficult too - I know several people not nearly as big as that pic who were told to lose weight before surgery, because of the additional risk if they didn't.

[woofgang]

and if they weren't fat, we wouldn't have the wars and extreme weather conditions that cause the starvation?

[ummmm]

I've changed my opinion over the years. My sister and my niece are obese. We've had, as a family, a hard few years. She eats for comfort, I lose my appetite. Her kids eat for comfort, mine don't. It's an emotional problem, liken, imo, to depression.

[Bluestone]

Exactly! Not every single person is obese because they are greedy and lazy. Some people, as Ummmm points out, eat for comfort/depression.
I think it's awful to say they shouldn't be treated on the NHS.
What about drug addicts, or the people that clog up the A&E waiting rooms on a Friday/Saturday night? They cost the NHS a ridiculous amount of time and money. Should they get pushed aside too, for getting themselves in that state?

Ludicrous.

[NOX]

Yeah and let's not treat alcoholics with liver issues, smokers with lung cancer or anyone else unlucky enough to have aids because after all they shouldn't have been gay, a drug abuser, had a transfusion or been cheated on by a lying partner should they? Likewise rugby players with broken necks can whislte dixie as far as I'm concerned and whilst we're at it lets get rid of the lifeboats because if silly people we're pratting about in the sea they wouldn't drown.Oooh and mountian rescue... and ambulances because people shouldn't have cars to crash...

[cecil39]

of course we must treat it as illness not just greed, BUT, why, when someone gets so big that they are helpless, dont those that keep on giving them totally unsuitable food be educated so they can help instead of making things worse, after all the 'victim' is not getting all this food themselves, surely someone in the health service can come up with a plan to stop them getting so bad that they become bedridden.

[andy-hughes]

The problem here - and The Sun is a gleeful perpetrator of it - is society's negative attitude towards obesity.

Culturally, as a society, we have always linked obesity with laziness and feckless disregard for health and an absence of self-rspect.

The red tops, with The Sun at their head, love to drop terms like 'gut bucket' and 'lard ass' into their stories where an obese person is involved.

Ideally, we are moving towards a more reasoned and compasionate society where obsese people are no longer figures of fun and/or contempt, but seen as indifiduals with differing reasons for their weight issues, which are more often linked with physical and psychological issues than a simple sense of gluttony.

As others hav pointed out - we cannot refuse to treat people based on arbitrary opinions based on no evidence, that some people 'deserve' their condition, what ever that may be. I would hope, as i say, that we have a large degree of compassion than that, because that thinking is the thin end of a very nasty wedge, and the thick end is a seriously unpleasant place to contemplate - no treatment for soldiers - they didn't have to join the army / no treatment for problem pregnancies - women don't have to have children ... the list could go on - but hopefully it won't.

[KerrAvon]

I've never been a fan of refusing treatment to what are termed "self inflicted ailments" as that could cover almost anything, however I would venture that this kind of issue is the fault of what has become the most ridiculous benefits culture in history. The article mentions those of 35+ Stone, now pretty well anyone of that sort of weight is unemployed and probably unemployable so the question is, why are our benefits so generous that people can get that fat? That's the real issue here.

[emmie]

perhaps it's not so much how much benefits. but what use you put it to. If it's big mac, coca cola and endless take aways then quite honestly i don't see how you can not put on the pounds. Maybe they need lessons in home economics, cooking in other words.

[KerrAvon]

the question is em10, how can they afford it?

[mazie]

It's much cheaper to make fresh meals from scratch and with places like Aldi and Lidl, there is no excuse to say you can't afford fresh fruit and veg. em10 hit the nail on the head with "home economics" we were taught this at school, now the kids get the odd "cookery" lesson, totally different.

[mazie]

Oh and yes, we should treat everyone, no matter.

[emmie]

i know that, you know that, but some of these people don't seem to.
And you can afford it if you get benefits, it just goes on stuff as i mentioned, as opposed to buying some goodies that won't make you quite so rotund. I know all about depression, and believe me when it's very bad the appetite goes crash, then it can switch around and you start comfort eating, it's why at times it's so very hard to treat.

[emmie]

I can't say i am the worlds most wondrous cook, but can make some decent meals. It's the itty bitty bit in between that does the damage, the cake with the coffee, and the crisps with the beer, or soft drink..

[Sqad]

This is a logistic problem....nothing to do with drug addicts alcoholism etc....these people pose 2 main problems, firstly they are so fat, that they cannot get them into the scanner and secondly, if they are "pushed in" the images are so fired that they are useless and so the patient has to be sent to London Zoo.

If that is not a spurr to losing weight....I don't know what is.

We are talking about grossly overweight patients in excess of 25 stones.

Yes some obese patients may be depressed, BUT are they depressed because they are obese or has their obesity caused their depression?
In my opinion this group form the minority of obese patients.

The results of operating on these people are so bad, that I would refuse to operate, taking up a bed, theatre time and skilled personel for the small chance of a good result.

[Baldric]

Well said that man!^^^