Flat-Earthers

By Michael Applebaum. MD, JD, FCLM

Flat-Earthers, using sometimes cute and occasionally clever arguments, try to prove that our planet is actually flat and disprove the truth that our planet is almost spherical.

Flat-Earthers are basically harmless.  (Links to a couple of Flat Earth Societies appear below.)

The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) describes itself as, “a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people.”

I think that I am an open-minded person.  I went to the NAAFA Website to learn more about it.

Veni, vidi, victuals.

These Fat-Earthers, or more correctly, Fat Earthlings, using rarely cute and infrequently clever arguments, try to disprove the truth that the human body is healthier when lean and prove that the human body is healthy when almost spherical.

I don’t think that these Fat Earthlings are basically harmless.  They have gone beyond the scope of a “human rights organization” and have gotten into giving health and fitness advice—bad health and fitness advice

For me, reading NAAFA’s material is similar to a situation where one person says the water is hot and another says the water is cold—there is little common ground.

I cannot say that amazement was my response.  I get that these super-size folk are in need of support for what they have in all likelihood done to their bodies.

What I don’t get is an apparent need to justify their condition thereby, in my opinion, encouraging harm to themselves and others.  The only lightness of being that these brontosapiens seem to have is flying in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

NAAFA does not dedicate itself to “improving the quality of life for fat people” by helping them lose weight.  In fact, “diet” is  a four-letter word to NAAFA.  (“Diet” is a word with four letters to me, but I don’t regard it as a four-letter word.)

Among its purposes, NAAFA claims to “advocate and sponsor responsible research about the various aspects of being fat.”  Yet, it suggests that the vast amount of research. accepted by scientists world-over, linking overweight and obesity to compromised health and disease is irresponsible, wrong and suspect.  (But, their vast bodies of fat are responsible, right and beyond suspect.)

NAAFA says that it “represents the interests of the fat population at conferences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and obesity research conferences, in order to shift the research agenda from a focus on finding ways to make fat people thin to ways to make fat people healthy.”  Yet, it denies that losing weight is a way to make fat people healthy.

NAAFA maintains that is has an education program.  Yet, it excludes a course on the health hazards of overweight and obesity.

NAAFA claims that its “members have participated in rallies and demonstrations in protest of Southwest Airlines' discriminatory practices regarding fat passengers, at an obesity research conference funded by the commercial weight loss industry, and in response to comments by New York Governor Mario Cuomo.”  Yet, NAAFA has not organized the Million Pounds March.  (Probably because they are so physically unfit.  A march route of a block or so is not favorably impressive.)

This organization, like others in the “Fat Acceptance Movement” such as the International Size Acceptance Association (ISAA), are in destructive denial.

These Fat-Earthlingss obstinately refute both the obvious facts and the results of scientific investigation.

My suggestion to these organizations and their ilk is to get out of the health and fitness advice business.  If you want to do your alleged civil rights thing, leave it at that.  Perhaps you can achieve some credibility.  But when you venture into areas where you are patently wrong, all your positions become questionable.

Here are the links to a couple of Flat Earth Societies: 

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/FlatHome.htm

http://www.flat-earth.org/