The Telegraph  03 August 2007  [David Haslam]

The head of the British Medical Association has sparked a row after claiming that fat people are simply greedy.  Dr Hamish Meldrum was reported yesterday as saying doctors over-medicalise the condition.  Obesity experts rounded on him saying his remarks were unhelpful and anachronistic.  Latest thinking suggests that genetics could be responsible for between 30% - 70% of cases.  Dr Meldrum said an obsession with labels may be stopping overweight people from tackling their problems. He said: "We are saying 'This patient has a hyper-appetite problem' rather than 'They are just greedy'."

 

David Haslam, said: "There is a lot of genetic predisposition to obesity." He said that only a third of people in the UK are a healthy weight and it is vital that overweight people are screened for dangerous conditions like diabetes, heart disease, strokes and infertility.  He added: "To say 'Go away. You've eaten too much, you fool' is entirely wrong."  

Colin Waine, quoted in separate coverage by the DAILY MAIL said that although medical intervention such as pills and surgery did not dramatically reduce a patient's weight, it was sufficient to cut the risk of illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. He added, “ I think that neither approach excludes the other, but you need a medical approach for this problem as well as a social one. I think that there's a tendency always to oversimplify these things. But if people are clinically obese they've often got risk factors for major diseases, and this is where you need medical help to reduce these risks. If we don't do something, by 2020 one fifth of the NHS budget will be spent on treating Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with obesity, so I think that medical intervention is very important."

[THE TIMES 06 August 2007 also ran a rebuttal of Dr Meldrum’s statement and referred to the NOF website]