Are obese people the ‘okay-to- bully’ group in our society?

Are obese people becoming the okay-to-bully group in our society? The thought that this might be so was reinforced by a BBC report about a proposal by NHS "bosses", as they are called, in a region in England to deny obese patients surgery for up to a year unless they lost weight.

Smokers could have procedures delayed for up to six months under the proposals which now seem to have been squashed at national level by even bigger “bosses”.

This happened in the UK but I’ve often wondered at the disapproving tone with which obesity is talked about on the Irish airwaves. What must it be like to be classified as an obese person and to be seen in that way in our society?

Nobody suggests, at least nobody I’ve heard of recently, that people who organise the sale and distribution of illegal drugs should be denied hospital treatment when they are shot.

Nor does anybody suggest that the person who suffers injuries in a car accident and who has previous convictions for dangerous driving should be denied the treatment they need.

So I wonder why anybody thought that they might be able to get away with doing this to obese people.

A surgeon, Shaw Somers, objecting to the discriminatory nature of the proposal told the BBC that almost all people who are classified as obese are trying to lose weight.

Moreover, we might be getting the focus wrong. The need of the food industry to sell large quantities of sugar in various forms is surely an important factor in the rise in obesity. But in positioning the whole problem as a question of some sort of moral deficit on the part of the obese, we let the industry off the hook.

I for one am fed up peering at labels trying to read the small print where sugar content of foods is listed. If we are serious about obesity as a health issue, surely the sugar content should positively leap out at us? Yet we quietly tolerate this kind of obfuscation on the part of the industry.

And we ignore also the problem that in the places in which poorer people live, it is relatively difficult to buy good food at an affordable price. You can buy all the crap you want but the good stuff may well be out of your reach.

I would suggest too that making obese people feel bad about themselves just might make it all the more difficult to turn away from the comfort that food provides.

If I was obese, I think I would find it very difficult to walk out my front door and down the street not only because of my weight but because of the attitudes and remarks I might encounter from the public.

My main issue, though, is that if we were to contemplate some sort of morality test for the provision of health services, or some form of institutionalised bullying, we would be acting in a most illogical way.

I suppose a few people can say that their lifestyles are so very good and upright that they cannot possibly be blamed if they find themselves in need of the attentions of the health service. I don’t actually know these people and, to be honest, I’m not sure I could stick them for very long if I did know them.

Most of us, I’m afraid, are doing something wrong or at least we are not quite up to the mark in all respects. But we proceed in the knowledge that our health service will treat us without regard to whether or not it approves of our lifestyle.

If we go down the road of applying moral disapproval to eligibility for health services, who knows which of us might find ourselves on the very sharp end of that particular stick?

And if we don’t want the attitude of those particular “bosses” in the NHS to make its way over here, maybe we should drop the disapproving tone when we talk about people with health issues.

Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.

pomorain@yahoo.com