In Ohio, a 53-year-old man condemned for a 1983 killing wants his execution delayed due to his adiposity (fatness), according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal (9/19/12). The dude weighs 480 pounds, which he believes will compromise the state's lethal injection process. He fatally shot a hotel clerk 30 years ago.
His lawyers claim his body fat will in some manner compromise access to his veins. Complicating matters further, he is so heavy the execution gurney might not hold him. How about getting him through the execution room door?
This entire drama raises two questions: 1) Whether or not overfeeding and solitary confinement that results in morbid obesity is cruel and unusual punishment? 2) Whether parents of obese children should be arrested for child abuse?
Another case reported in this same issue involves the sickness-care establishment. A 57-year-old man can't find a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine necessary to diagnose his condition because manufacturers don't make them sufficiently large to accommodate his 630 pounds.
With more than one-fourth of the U.S. population now considered obese, this is both a problem and an opportunity. The problem is what does a person do when he or she can't fit on a medical table or gurney? The opportunity is that with gross levels of increasingly fat adults, this could be a new market segment for manufacturers of everything from elevators to stretchers, ladders, beds, chairs and automobile shock absorbers. Bernd Montag, CEO of Siemens Imaging Division says, "The U.S. is the biggest market for us, so every product we build has the obese American patient in mind."
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 28% of all Americans are now obese, up from 20% just 15 years ago. Apparently building larger equipment to accommodate fatter patients is only part of the problem. Obese individuals also require more radiation to penetrate their body fat, therefore bringing on new health risks.
Hmm, is this really a "new health risk"? Or is it the highly predictable consequence of a culture dedicated to sickness-care with less regard for real health promotion and disease prevention?