Reflecting on the rebranding of ‘obese’ to ‘living with obesity’, Copperfield laments the epidemic of medical labelling
While widening the doors and reinforcing the floors in anticipation of the stampede desperate to be Mounjaro’d, I noticed something interesting. The current guidance describes the artist formerly known as obese as, ‘living with obesity’. I was completely unaware of this semantic shift, perhaps because I am living with stupidity.
You might think this is bariatrical-correctness-gone-mad, but, being sensitive and non-judgmental, I’m actually in favour of it. This new label puts a discreet distance between the fact of a pathology and the responsibility for it – in the same way that I am living with an avocado bathroom suite only until I get the cash injection to tear it out.
It is a bit cumbersome, though. If two people each with a BMI>35 are cohabiting, you have someone living with obesity living with someone living with obesity. Or to summarise, S2L3W3O2 – which I think is also the chemical formula for fat.
That aside, I fully support the fashion for not defining ourselves by our illnesses. I am a person living with asthma, for example. I am not an ‘asthmatic’, I am so much more than that. For example, I also have eczema.
At the opposite extreme, some patients seem to wear their pathological label as a badge of honour. For some reason, I’m thinking of ‘fibro’. This grates, perhaps because it connotes a stoic club that I wouldn’t want to join, and which certainly wouldn’t have me as a member. Or maybe it’s just that ‘fibromyalgia’ is a mouthful. But so is endometriosis, and I’ve never heard that referred to as ‘endo’.
On the other hand, if your diagnostic label sounds pejorative, current sensitivity will iron that out for you. Hence hepatologists renaming the frankly insulting ‘fatty liver’ with MASLD, which sounds quite nice, even if no one can remember what it stands for.
It’s a fascinating area, the science and evolution of medical labels. It’s probably a sub-genre in and of itself, though I’ve no idea what to call it. What I do know is that nomenclature nerds have for ages tried to relabel our role: Consultant Generalist, Specialist in Primary Care Physician, Family Medicine Consultants, yada yada.
But if you’re living with absurd hours, inadequate resources, dumping syndrome, abuse from patients, vilification in the media, over-scrutiny and the toughest job in the NHS, you know exactly what you are: a GP. I can live with that, though not for much longer.
Dr Tony Copperfield is a GP in Essex
Good article! — but I wouldn’t say that having fibromyalgia is a ‘badge of honour’
To the point as usual ! It’s always a good time reading your satire:) Please keep it up 👍
As ever, great observations.
Hilarious Tony. And while the NHS stores obesity data using the FAT32 system(haha), the epidemic of re/mis/dys-labelling is corrupting not just the NHS but every part of public life. Eg., this week, a box of fresh horse-sh*t sent to the House of Conmen got MPs shouting that it was “egregious”, “abhorrent”, and “morally wrong”…..but not a single MP could bring themself to call it out for what it was – ie., a box of sh*t.
And somewhere else, there was the issue of no people with obesity, so no obesity, nor living nor dying with obesity. In fact, there were no people, they’d vanished…the Missing people….the absent children. And where there should have been powerful words, there was