Another irritating “my child’s not fat” story
Re: this article.
A mother chooses to disclose the contents of a private letter telling her that her son that he’s on the 98th centile for BMI. She does this by calling him “fat”. This upsets him. So she has a picture of him printed in a national newspaper with a report explaining that he’s reportedly “fat”. And then blames the NHS. Exasperating!
Perhaps the letter she received needs refining. Perhaps a letter isn’t the appropriate way to communicate this info.
But the bare choice is between:
a) Not monitoring children’s health
b) Monitoring but not disclosing the results
c) Monitoring and giving advice to parents of children with a high BMI
I can only ever see “c” being the ethical option.
Would this mother really have preferred not to know that her child is at statistically increased risk of a variety of diseases? Would she really rather not have been given advice on how to help? Was it really ethical of the Daily Mail to cash in on her unhappiness rather than pointing her in the direction of her GP?
I suspect the answer to all three is “no”.
Rant over.
This post was filed under: Health, Ethics, Medicine, National Childhood Measurement Programme, Obesity Epidemic, Public Health, The Daily Mail.