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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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We might hear about the odd obese person whose health problems were caused by something unrelated to their weight and carelessly overlooked by a GP, but for every one I'm sure there are at least 100 cases where the GP's snap diagnosis was right on the money.

And from the fat person's perspective, they go to the GP saying "I have this new issue; I've had this body type my whole life, so that part is not new." and the GP is ignoring their history.

(See also trans activists, who demand that healthcare professionals waste hundreds of man-hours asking 6-foot tall, bearded, broad-shouldered people if they are or have been pregnant recently.)

Well, that question has been on every medical history form I've ever gotten because they don't print different ones for men and women.

And from the fat person's perspective, they go to the GP saying "I have this new issue; I've had this body type my whole life, so that part is not new." and the GP is ignoring their history.

  1. The obese person may have gained weight since their last GP visit and may not have realised it (or may be in denial about it).
  2. Many of the health problems faced by obese people are cumulative and progressive, and don't just show up the second your BMI tips over from 29.95 to 30. This is the same self-serving reasoning as "I've been smoking a pack a day since I turned fifteen and I never had so much as a cough, so my current chest pains can't possibly be caused by my smoking."

Well, that question has been on every medical history form I've ever gotten because they don't print different ones for men and women.

My father was getting a Covid vaccine in 2021 and the nurse was completing an intake form in which she verbally asked him the questions on the form and filled in his answers for him. She asked him if he'd been pregnant recently. In his 60+ years, he'd never been asked this question by a medical professional before. See also this article about a blood donor clinic which used to ask "for female donors only have you been pregnant recently?", but changed the form to ask all donors that, even donors who'd already explicitly stated that they were male and hence incapable of getting pregnant. (They changed the form back to its non-pseudoscientific version in response to public outcry.)

And from the fat person's perspective, they go to the GP saying "I have this new issue; I've had this body type my whole life, so that part is not new." and the GP is ignoring their history.

And from the smoker's perspective, they go to the GP saying "I have this new issue; I've been smoking since I was in high school and I've never been coughing up blood before" and the GP is ignoring their history.

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