Should Morbid Childhood Obesity Be Considered Child Abuse?

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By Philip Yam | Jul 13, 2011 06:30 PM

ow that the battle against the bulge in the U.S. has reached the grade school level, plenty of efforts have begun to fight childhood obesity and its dangers. They range from educational efforts, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign, to new pediatric surgical programs nationwide. Now two researchers float a legal approach: make severe obesity a crime.

Lindsey Murtagh of the Harvard School of Public Health and David S. Ludwig of the Children's Hospital in Boston present their case in the July 13 issue of JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. Their commentary, "State Intervention in Life-Threatening Childhood Obesity," makes the point that kids with a body-mass index in the 99th percentile face serious health threats:

Obesity of this magnitude can cause immediate and potentially irreversible consequences, most notably type 2 diabetes. This complication, reflecting years of progressive metabolic deterioration, carries a dire prognosis. In addition to hyperglycemia, youth with type 2 diabetes typically have severe insulin resistance, low diet quality, sedentary lifestyle, and poor adherence to medical treatment.


Allowing your kids to develop such a condition, which leads to severe cardiovascular damage on all levels and a shortened life, could be seen as bad parenting. Although the authors also point out the existence of other "obesigenic" factors, such as the marketing of unhealthy foods, the primary responsibility falls on the parents. And as such, existing laws could be applied

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=should-morbid-childhood-obesity-be-2011-07-13