I would say that in at least some cases over eating and anxiety are both symptoms of underlying problems. Stress, emotional issues, and trauma can all lead someone to either of the two.
As someone that uses food as a coping mechanism for stress, I agree with the GP - if the underlying problem isn't resolved, the weight will come back.
> And more discussion around these issues is more likely to lead to positive outcomes than ignoring them.
Sometimes I wonder.
The left spends a lot of time pointing out that the right is bigoted, and the right just shrugs, because so what? These two groups disagree on whether there is a problem.
While one person saying this once is not necessarily harassment, the frame of reference has to be from the context of the recipient. Consider how often the author has to hear this or similar comments from customers as a result of being a woman working in a trade.
It sounds like from your perspective, being better looking than their co-workers is a good thing. By and large, men are going to find women better looking than other men. That means the "better looking" comment is directly pointing out that the recipient of the comment is a woman.
This article is talking specifically about the ways in which it is detrimental to be a tradeswoman. So in this context, being a woman makes it more difficult for this person to their job.
Looking at another example of something that would make being a tradesperson difficult: Would you call it harassment if customers were consistently making flippant remarks about a co-worker that was missing a hand?
The other perspective on this is Women put a lot of care into how they look. Men don't. Admiration for your best qualities is a gesture of friendship. Same goes with those who are young and energetic. Statements like "pretty boy" is a compliment and adoration. Or statements like "big guy" or "general" for old and experienced.
> It sounds like from your perspective, being better looking than their co-workers is a good thing. By and large, men are going to find women better looking than other men. That means the "better looking" comment is directly pointing out that the recipient of the comment is a woman.
It is hard to be funny without referring to anything about the current situation.
Agreed.
I don't think it'd be unreasonable to do blood testing as part of a kid's regular checkup cycle. Doctors use metrics to determine whether kids are growing properly (height + weight, as well as a general visual check), but are those the best metrics? It's likely they're just "good enough".
Actually, weight and height are very good indicators of general health. Anyway, the information it gives is already more than appears to be in use.
There's no need for blood work to spot the obese three year old kid at day care who is well on the road to juvenile Type II diabetes. The poor girl is wider than she is tall. A simple BMI metric and the Dr. should be able to tell the parents they need to lay off the carbs.
It helps the other 29 kids in the class until there are altercations involving 5-7 of those.
Then it helps the other 22 kids in the class.
What's the endgame? Do you suspend half the kids in the classroom because they're causing a disturbance for the other half?
Something this whole argument misses is that school is a great mechanism to teach kids to interact with each other and learn to solve problems.
It's a bad idea to teach kids that everything is always black and white.
This is a good argument for government funded R&D, and government owned drugs.
They cost a ton of money and take forever to create, so the product becomes very expensive, and rights to it are owned by the creating company.
The government empowers a body to regulate the flow of new drugs on the market, and once the drug meets regulatory requirements, the government - in many cases - pays on behalf of the patient.
A company is interested in making a profit on their time investment, whereas the government could be content to break even (for the good of their citizens).
If the government instead paid a company to do the R&D, maybe even providing access to approved facilities where the work is to be done, the government could then retain ownership of that product and then create agreements with drug manufacturers to produce those drugs.
This solves a couple of problems, like sole producers of a product arbitrarily increasing prices (it is expensive and time consuming to set up production for a new drug, even if it is off patent), as well as supply issues (I don't think right now the FDA has any rules saying a drug company must be able to supply a certain amount of a drug to get their license to distribute).
A good argument against government funded R&D is that several of our modern medical challenges have been deeply embroiled in political debates.
AIDS/HIV(originaly called GRID) was originally considered a punishment for gay men who were seen in the 80's as being immoral and sinful by the establishment. Government-funded R&D for AIDS drugs would have been unlikely for decades.
Another example is hormonal birth control. Birth control in general is a huge political football with portions of the establishment wanting no access to birth control at all. If R&D were government funded it's possible for these people to prevent access simply by making funding of certain lines of research illegal.
I think you have to look beyond the price of treatment to really see the benefit of a healthy private enterprise here. There are still a ton of ways that government contributes to new treatments, like grant funding for basic research and development. But I can see your proposed future becoming a dystopia, where whoever is in power in government makes it illegal to sell certain patented drugs to their particular underclass of the week.
This isn't some hypothetical challenge. There's only a few hundred known cases in the US and most of the dismissals are recent because of the feasibility and availability of PCR and other DNA amplification techniques. Anyone could exhaustively read through every case in a few days (which seems to be only fair when you're talking about taking people's lives).
edit: and why would you expect differently about suicide rates? Prison is awful. It is punishment, and it the punishment doesn't end after you have left because loss of vote, inability to work in many fields, social stigma, and broken relationships. However, generally speaking, most people in prison are guilty (even if many are not). It is a distinctly different group than people than those exonerated after a death sentence, who are invariably not guilty and they know it. The two groups aren't comparable even though one is a subset of the other.
As someone that uses food as a coping mechanism for stress, I agree with the GP - if the underlying problem isn't resolved, the weight will come back.