Saturday, June 21, 2008

Lay off David Caplan


And I don't mean "lay off" in the firing kind of way.

Yesterday David Caplan was sworn in as Ontario's new Health Minister (taking over from George Smitherman).

Was the first question he faced in the press gallery about wait times, or perhaps more apropos, about how many Ontarians don't have a family doctor?

Nope.

It was whether or not as Health Minister he planned to lose weight.

Weight is a private matter. The insinuation of course is that perhaps he's not suited to his job because he does not possess a healthy body weight.

Does that mean a cardiologist with hypertension should look for something else to do?

His health is his business, and just because he has weight that may be healthy to lose does not make him any more or less suited to his job.

Whoever that reporter was, feel free to give me a ring and I'll be happy to give you a whole article about why questions like yours set back efforts at treating obesity as the chronic condition that it is, and how that in turn makes it easier for the government to slough off obesity as a problem of the individual, rather than one of our environment.