Harvard University Professor Dr. David Ludwig is under attack for his public call this week for some obese children to be taken from their parents to protect their health. Ludwig stated that “[i]n severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.” That legal standpoint may need a bit more work.
Ludwig is an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His comments came in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
First, in defense of Ludwig, he prefaced his statement by saying that such intervention would only be in severe cases. It is indeed possible for a child to be removed in a severe case where the child is in imminent risk of seriously injury or death due to either acts or omissions by the parents.
However, the statement rightfully raised concerns. There is growing evidence of genetic predispositions for obesity in some people. The parents may not be at fault in the continuing condition. Moreover, removing the child from the home will only increase stress for the child.
Parental rights are protected by the Constitution and, while child services are given a fair degree of discretion in the removal of children from homes to protect them, those decisions are subject to a full legal process. Most such removals are likely to fail under current legal standards absent a showing of imminent harm and a failure of the parents to follow medical advice. As a comparison, courts often express reluctance to order cancer treatments or medical interventions for a child when parents claim religious objections to treatment. The child is often at immediate risk when a court issues an order of removal or arrest.
The problem is that obesity is very common (unfortunately) among children today and they are all at some level of risk. An estimated 12.5 million children and teens (17% of that population) are obese.
Ludwig would need a case where the child is in immediate risk of heart failure of some of medical emergency. Such a status usually required hospitalization, not foster care. Moreover, experts in the article below question whether care would improve in foster care.
This was the case of 3-year-old Anamarie Regino who weighed 90 pounds and was removed from the home for two months. She did not show any improvement in foster care. She is now 14 years old and was raised by her parents.
Source: ABC News
Mike Spindell:
you can eat healthy for cheap. Oatmeal, barley, beans, chicken and leafy green vegetables and potatoes.
whole chicken – 6 bucks
Oatmeal 10 bucks for about 10 lbs
barley – couple bucks for a couple of pounds
beans – around 80 cents a bag
leafy green vegs – 2 bucks a bunch
potatoes 2-3 dollars for a couple of pounds
Roman gladiators ate beans and barley.
for 25 dollars a family of 4 could eat at least dinner for 2 days and maybe lunches and breakfast for at least a week. It would cost about $2 dollars per person. Much less than McDonalds.
There cannot at the same time be a food shortage and an epidemic of obesity.
@shano, show me the scientific studies that speak to you think are the dangers of GMFs.
@Mike Spindell, what’s wrong with fast food? I thought you were all about individual freedoms.
@GeneH, what exactly is your point with your defined terms and how do they apply to the issue at hand. Also, your conclusion re more government inspection seems moot, private industry already has higher standards and their own testing regime. The USDA’s testing regime is substandard. It is a waste of taxpayer money. All it does is dish off inspection costs to the taxpayer and gives big business an advantage over small business. Businesses already has a big incentive not to kill their own customers or make them sick. It’s bad for repeat business.
kderosa,
Do you understand the difference between the words “safe” and “unsafe” and the phrases “good food”, “simply food” and “bad food”? Could more be done to improve the efficacy of food safety in this country? Why yes it could; a more rigorous scientific testing regimen (as the CDC and FDA are both recommending) and enough inspectors to properly do the job just to name two things that would help. Letting the food industry police the problem themselves though isn’t in any way going to result in improvements to anything other than their profit margin judging by their past performance.
What gets lost in a discussion like this is why crap fast food is so popular, beyond the hefty percentage spent on advertising and promotion. It’s cheap and people don’t have money. People by “Dollar Meals” for their kids because they are cheap. Add to that the fact that in many family’s today both parents works and so don’t have time for preparation of good meals.
I must admit that at points when my daughter’s were young, my wife and I were so lacking in money that Roy Rogers was the location for our Friday night meals. Many of my daughter’s friends parents were there also. I even found a way to feed my family of four at Sizzler for less than $10.00. I knew it was wrong, but when you’re strapped for cash in America you do make choices. I can remember not paying a utility bill one time because my daughter needed an antibiotic for Strep that cost $75. This is why the professor’s meanderings are not responsive to the issue. Food is a necessity and many people are simply unable to feed their children as well as they might like.
We should enact the food and cosmetic standards of the EU. That would cut costs of medical care in the US by 30% or so. No doubt about it.
kderosa; Darwins law will sort it out then. Ignore the science coming out about our terrible food system? Stupidity.
I do realize most people are addicted to the food they eat and cannot or will not consider changing even if their life depends on it.
“OMG! You have revealed one of my most guilty pleasures”
LK,
You were the one who tipped me off to Vachhs in the first place. I couldn’t remember who and thought it was Buddha, Bob, Mespo or AY. I’ve read all of the Burke Series, including the final wrap-up novel. I love the series as much as i love good hot and sour soup. He is a great writer and Burke’s companions are also a fascinating group.
When I ran an elite investigation Unit in NYC Child Welfare I had planned out a novel where when the perpetrator got off on a technicality, I would end the book by throwing him off a tenement roof. Never wrote it, but imagine my vicarious thrill when you turned me onto Burke. The thing with Vachhs is he knows the system from his career and he gives the inside scoop on the troubles of Foster Care.
Lotta and Mike,
If you like Vachss, you should give Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard books a try. I wouldn’t recommend starting with either of the two published this year, but that’s mainly because they don’t stand alone nearly as well.
Of course I just like Lansdale in general.
kderosa:
since no one asked what the fallacy of Ignatius Loyal is, I present this for your criticism:
“Loyola’s devotion to the Catholic Church was characterized by unquestioning obedience to the Catholic Church’s authority and hierarchy.”
I would therefore call the fallacy a slavish, unthinking devotion to an institution or an idea or ideology.
You can’t please all the scooter people, you know. Hey, there’s a Bojangles’ around the corner!
@Shano, right because old wives’ tales are not science.
@GeneH, so then it’s safe to assume hat the “spent birds” are graded since they have been determined by the USDA to be safe for human consumption. Nonethless, fast food restaurants won’t use them and apparently no one else wants them for human food either. So they go to pet food or compost. Did you have a relevant point to make?
shano,
Not to mention the taste issue. Both of my grandmothers raised chickens. They tasted like chicken. Any factory farmed chicken tastes just about like the Styrofoam tray they pack it on.
I wouldn’t feed my dog CAFO chicken. But it might go to the higher quality dog food processors. You are usually safe buying lamb based dog food. Lamb will die if you try to put them in a CAFO. So, I buy the lamb, bison or venison based dog foods.
Its all contaminated CAFO chicken anyway. No matter the grade. In CAFOS, they feed arsenic to the chickens for weight gains, and it is becoming a problem in land contamination when they use compost from CAFO chickens.
They are only now considering banning this practice.
I would never eat a CAFO chicken of any kind. Too much risk of antibiotic resistant ecoli and MSRA.
To say nothing of the sodium water plumping of the carcass they do to cheat people.
kderosa,
“For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food.”
Poultry, like beef, only has a limited number of grades. A, B and C. All are safe for human consumption. If they are not one of those grades, they are classified as “pet food only”. Grades B and C poultry are usually used in further-processed products where the poultry meat is cut up, chopped, or ground. Grade C chicken is safe for human consumption, but guess what? It also gets used for other things like dog food and chicken nuggets. If sold at retail, they are usually not grade identified. Again, if ungraded or pet food only graded chicken is being purchased, it’s against the law. Too add to your collection, if you think I care what you think about “saving face”, I don’t take that seriously either.
I was referencing the Utube video above.
If they put this girl on the typical supermarket ‘low fat’ food and diet soda, she will have an even bigger chemical load that will not enable her to lose weight.
The body needs real nourishment. Not food substitutes.
Does anyone think that ‘natural food’ created a little girl like that?
It is a combination of steroids in US meat, HFCS and all the “approved” food chemicals that disrupt endocrine systems in humans -coloring, flavoring, preservatives, packaging chemicals, et al
The food we have now is not the food I grew up on.
Biologically or esthetically.
kderosa, hmmm nothing about suicides in India, the poor yield of GMO crops, the incredible reliance on expensive fossil fuel based fertilizers and herbicides, fungicides, etc. GMO crops need more of these chemicals than conventional seed crops.
GMO grains may be turning our gut bacteria into pesticide producing machines as all genetic material is traded quite rapidly in bacterial evolution.
This is why we find MSRA at rates up to 50% in all CAFO workers.
GeneH, stop being stupid for a second. The USA Today article stated that the meat, “spent hens,” was being purchased by the USDA for the national school lunch program and was considered safe for human consumption. However, the article also pointed out that fast food restaurants had an even higher standard for the meat they served and, as such, the ‘spent hens” if not purchased by the USDA would likely go to pet food or compost. The article didn’t mention anything about pet food grade food.
I think you are just trying to post anything that was vaguely relevant to save face after your repeated blunders on this issue.
Try reading slowly and carefully and you won’t embarrass yourself quite so much.
Once again, I’m growing bored with watching you chase your own tale. I’m going to bed. If you post anything worth responding to, I will do so tomorrow. If you don’t, I won’t.