Revenge of the Fat People

Nice article at Tech Central Station about the CDC's admission this week that it has overblown reports of the adverse health effects of obesity. The article is strongly libertarian (no surprise, coming from TCS), but also seems laced with a little Ivan Illich and his famous opening words from Medical Nemesis: "The medical establishment has become a major threat to health.” Link. Excerpts:

The agency said Tuesday that it has greatly over-exaggerated the number of lives lost each year to obesity. After years of putting the figure somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000, the agency now says the net number is just under 26,000, meaning the government has been telling us obesity is fourteen times the threat it actually is, leading policymakers at all levels of governance to prescribe all matter of intrusive, expensive, choice-restrictive public policies aimed at addressing it.

There are several lessons to learn from the CDC's striking admission of error. First, government shouldn't "act ahead of the science." It shouldn't even act if and when the science becomes conclusive.

Finally, we need to get over this obsession with longevity, and let people make their own decisions. Believe it or not, there are people out there who know they have bad habits, and know that those habits may very well shorten their lives. Yet they entertain those habits anyway. Some people simply value the taste of a greasy cheeseburger or the drag off an afternoon cigarette more than the extra six months in the nursing home quitting either habit may (or may not) give them. Even the most earnest of government numbers-crunching isn't going to change that. Nor should it.