Obesity Declared A Disease By the AMA
Obesity should be considered a disease, not simply a medical condition, the American Medical Association’s House decided in a vote Tuesday, June 18, against the recommendation of the its own Council on Science and Public Health.
On Monday, the AMA Council released a report on the difficulty of diagnosing and defining obesity, calling the classification of obesity as a disease difficult due to a lack of a clinically practical diagnostic indicator.
The recommendation was overturned in a vote by the full AMA House, in which almost 60% voted to classify obesity as a disease – an opinion backed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.
Arguments centered over the use of a person’s body-mass index to define obesity and consideration of individuals that are overweight without experiencing any health limitations. Preventative efforts might also suffer, some argued, should the condition be labeled a disease.
Those for the definition argue that on the contrary, labeling obesity a disease will highlight the seriousness of an epidemic that currently affects 1 in 3 Americans.
–Michael Potts
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Reference
American Medical Association House of Delegates. Recognition of Obesity as a Disease. http://media.npr.org/documents/2013/jun/ama-resolution-obesity.pdf Published June 18, 2013. Accessed June 19, 2013.