Today's bit of good news

[firecat]

Seen elsewhere on my flist, passing it on.

Obesity Danger May Have Been Overstated (AP, by Carla K. Johnson). Excerpt:

Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading preventable causes of death, according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated Tuesday that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States.
...
It would fall behind car crashes and guns on the list of killers.

I'm very surprised (pleasantly so) that they admitted it. Of course, "the CDC is not going to use the brand-new figure of 25,814 in its public awareness campaigns and is not going to scale back its fight against obesity." (Because, I believe, that would take money away from the diet industry, who are used to having it.) But it's something.

Comments

[redbird]

It's not just this issue: whether or not they change their publicity on this, they've told everyone that we cannot believe the numbers they give out as the basis for their health advice, because the CDC won't change said numbers when it learns they're wrong.

Even if they do the correct, honest thing this time, the next time they say something people don't want to hear--whether on flu vaccines or HIV--someone is going to ask why we should believe them, since they've said they'll lie to the American people. That's a question that even telling the truth won't answer, if they get that reputation.

[firecat]

What I am especially interested in is what reporters do with this new information. They are on the front lines of the War Against Fat People and have been gleefully throwing around the "300,000 deaths a year due to fat" number for a while now. I'm curious whether they'll continue to use it.