Okay, it’s a little scary to me that a doctor — or perhaps one pretending to be one? — would make such an egregious statement.

Ever hear of weight gain as a result of taking prescription Prozac? Xanax? Lexapro? Wellbutrin?

Ever heard about the doctors who WON’T TELL their patients about the possibility of weight gain as a side effect because they’re afraid the patients won’t then be “compliant” and take their medications?

You’ve had NO ONE in your circle of friends or family take their antidepressant (or bipolar, or hell, prednisone or other steroid-based medication, for that matter) and put on 50 pounds in a matter of months??

Get a grip on your unresearched, prejudicial BS and come out of denial, please. YOU CAN’T look at someone and know without further observation WHY they’re overweight — no matter how much it would serve your dangerously narrowminded and superficial worldview to do so.

And people wonder why we’re losing economic ground to China. No one can THINK and REASON in this country.

Bloviating blowhard.

Read this and tell me how you feel:

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050831/NEWS/508310344/1024/NEWS04

I’m amazed at how many assumptions have been made about her when we know so little.

There is a lot missing in this story. Thus far, we’ve heard the doctor speak and be interviewed. That’s only one side of the story.

That is your judgment. Apparently others have a different opinion. Just because someone dislikes what they are told, or is told something they don’t want to hear doesn’t automatically qualify the message as an affront to “dignity”. There is a lot of cheap trade in “dignity” these days, most of it pandered by enablers of lazy and irresponsible behavior who see opportunity to grandstand rather than lead.

Tough message to this obese lady, but largely true. Too bad she isn’t much for having insight into her own behavior; far easier to squeal about affronts to dignity than to dig into the hard turf of personal responsibility. There is always a peanut gallery of “supporters” and enablers.

The issue at hand is whether they should be compassionate and respectful of the DIGNITY of the person. This man was not.

It’s that simple.

That is a completely irrelevant and impertinent example. Mastectomy is done as a treatment of a life-threatening disease. No one expects any patient to do anything preventative about breast cancer, and mastectomy, while disfiguring, is a difficult but necessary choice, under the best of circumstances.

Obesity is completely different: first, it is preventable. Second, it is treatable. Third, it is reversible. And last–unlike the mastectomy example–all of these differences are under the control of the patient. Obese people get that way by overeating; there simply is no other way. Dissembling about many causes and social factors surrounding obesity is really just a way of enabling and denying responsibility of the obese person. No decent person blames the person with breast cancer
for her disease. The same is not true for the obese person, unless that person is so mentally impaired that they cannot be seen as responsible for their actions. Sorry to say, but but control of obesity does contain an implied moral component, and the people making the judgments based on that aspect of the disorder are for the most part not doctors. That much should be obvious to anyone with any knowledge of our culture. Is it wrong then for a patient’s doctor to point that out?

In todays society everyone wants to have recourse to litigation or cause unnecessary steps to admonish this doctor. The medical board should be ashamed of themselves for wanting this doctor to apologize to this woman. The medical board owes Doctor Bennett an apology.

When are these people going to wake up from this idiotic political correctness and a rewriting of American History.

America is not bad. It is GOOD. The best country ever to exist on the face of the earth.

Yeah?

And does that apply to FAT patients too? Or just everyone else?

Ha! Cracks me up reading these comments… you assume about chips and doughnuts and lack of excercise. You don’t know ANY of that from this article! Shame on you.

As for the moron who went on and on about law suits, this person didn’t file a law suit – she filed a complaint.

I thought that doctors were challenged to “first, do no harm”. Well, studies PROVE that in all the mistreatment of obese patients by medical professionals, it serves only to make them less likely to seek medical care. Women are much less likely to come in for their annual pap smears or mammograms because doctors are such asshats.

Hey, you medical people reading this– TAKE SOME OF THE RESPONSIBILITY here. Have some humanity. Maybe consider living up to your own principles about how to treat patients.