NYT: Fed. Study Tying Longer Life to Extra Pounds Draws Fire

[DeepModem Mom]

Study Tying Longer Life to Extra Pounds Draws Fire
By GINA KOLATA
Published: May 27, 2005


The new federal study suggesting that people tend to live longer if they are slightly overweight was challenged yesterday by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health and the American Cancer Society as well as a heart disease researcher.

But authors of the federal research said in interviews that they stood by their conclusions and that the criticisms were based on misrepresentations of what they had done.

The study under attack was published last month by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. It concluded that people who are overweight but not obese have a lower death risk than people of normal weight. The scientists also reported that being very thin increased the risk of death, even if the thinness was longstanding and not due to illness.

In a seminar and news conference yesterday at the public health school, in Boston, the critics said other studies, including their own, had found that the death risk from excess pounds increased continuously from normal weight to overweight to obesity.

Dr. Scott M. Grundy, a heart researcher at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, said excess weight clearly led to heart disease and death. Dr. Michael Thune of the American Cancer Society said the same applied to cancer....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/health/27obese.html

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Yes.. all the scientists raking in big bucks from the perpetual diet

industry probably DO have a problem with that study :D

[MisterP]

2. and those raking in big bucks from Mickey D's don't

this'll be quite a fight!
CATO's funded by both sides, maybe they'll both bankrupt themselves trying to buy PR

[KittyWampus]

10. It Was Shitty Research. Only Factors Considered Were Weight & Age Of Death

if you die of a chronic or wasting illness chances are, you'll have lost weight... thus bringing average weight at death down.

Same principle as Bill Gates pushing average income up.

Just before this came out there was an editorial in Sunday NYTimes about how changing your diet is essentially useless and all it does it improve the 'odds'.

After reading THAT, I predicted that some lawsuits against garbage food producers might be coming down the pike.

Sure enough, after THIS report, a bill to protect fast food corporations from lawsuits was put forth.


Also, Insurance Co's don't want to pay for diet modification programs and weight loss programs. Easier to just drop people or not cover them.

And finally, coke and mcdonalds make big bucks putting their crap in schools and this is leading to overweight & obese kids. But GEE! now that's no longer a problem.

[daleo]

3. Big oil may have an interest in this too.

Less concern about weight means less concern about exercise which means less concern about driving. I think there are a lot of very deep pocketed interests behind the scenes in this debate.

[Horse with no Name]

4. One of the points I made weeks ago about this study

The insurance industry did not want to start paying for weight loss.
With the factual evidence of what obesity does to the body, they were forced to. Treatment for weight loss is very, very expensive to the insurance companies.
The typical surgery for gastric bypass is a Roux-en-y procedure.
This procedure has a high number of complications which is very expensive for the insurance company.
But--the people that qualify for this surgery generally will have a high rate of complications from the obesity.
It's quite simply for some, do or die.
My gut tells me that the government is supplying the insurance companies (with this study) with a reason to be able to deny this surgery since obesity "isn't that bad anymore".
You watch the insurance companies. They will not be forced to pay for weight loss treatments anymore.
This is very bad IMHO and as a nurse who has taken care of obese patients and their complications for close to 20 years, I don't believe a word of it.

[DeepModem Mom]

5. Very interesting, Horse -- you could well be right. nt

[DulceDecorum]

6. Many of the ideas we have in our heads

came straight from Edward L. Bernays.
Including that notion about needing a hearty breakfast and the other one about needing to lose weight.
http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1999Q2/bernays.html

Bernays practically invented Public Relations and he was a penultimate spin doctor whose work was openly admired by Goebbels.

Bernays is dead,
so it is going to be interesting to see who triumphs now.

[fasttense]

7. They are both right on the weight issue

about twenty years ago numerous studies showed being 5 to 20 pounds overweight helped people survive serious illnesses, especially in the elderly and very young. As more and more people were getting medical treatment sooner, these statistics started to decline. But now that fewer and fewer people can afford to get medical attention for illnesses before they become life threatening, this statistic is becoming obvious again. There is a bell curve for everything humans do. Those on the extremes will always have more difficulty.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. Sounds right, fasttense. nt

[sendero]

9. It's downright laughable...

.... to look at some of the methodologies used in these studies.

This data is or that data is excluded based on /researcher pulling reason out of his ass/.

Some studies allow the subject to report their weight, others actually weigh the subjects. I wonder which is more accurate.

As I've said here many time, the term "medical science" is largely an oxymoron. One decade, its this bugaboo, the next it's the opposite. One year the sun is your enemy, the next its a cancer preventer. One year you are supposed to brush up and down, the next side to side. :)

Really, some times this is a result of the media mis-representing what a study actually means. But often, you cannot trust studies because they are done to prove a pre-conceived point of view and the data is massaged endlessly until that point is 'proven'.

For these studies, notice that the Harvard nurses study (older study that proves excess weight kills) used BMI (body mass index) as a measure, as useless a number as has ever been invented for expressing a person's body composition. Based on that alone, I have to wonder if the newer study isn't more accurate.