JAMA: State Should Seize Fat Children from Parents

Quote via Cousin Bill

"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
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Welcome to the next chapter in our continuing coverage of Police State USA. In a JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) opinion piece, the authors argue for taking “super-obese” children from parents and putting them in foster care.

Having just researched the dark side of well-intentioned “Progressivism” (early 20th century), I find this chilling. Even more chilling that the author thinks there is no need for any further laws to enable doctors to give children to foster parents? True (and sadly), they don’t need new laws but there are competing laws emphasizing unity of parent-child even when Momma is on meth. So the kids go in-and-out of our benevolent state-run foster care system. This is the same Government that gave us Social Security–an agency that GIVES YOU MONEY for being “morbidly obese.” This is the straight-thinking State that is going to seize children from parents? God help us.

In the view of these Ivory Tower academics, The State sees something bad and swoops in to save the day. We normal human beings have been “Waiting for Superman” but Supermen already exist at the Harvard-affiliated Children’s Hospital and Harvard’s School of Public Health (the home of the JAMA authors)! Supermen and superwomen exist in DCFS agencies around the country. If only these angels ran the government, there would be no “super-obesity,” no anorexia, no bad behavior at all! Their strategy would eliminate “obesigenic environmental influences” (yes, “obesigenic” is jargon in their world).

The authors are careful not to “blame the parents”; they mention environmental factors but downplay genetics. Their Progressive predecessors took the next step to deal with the genetic angle: selective sterilization to weed out “imbeciles.” The State still has that power, but our authors assure us, state power over our bodies will only be used in extreme cases. (Buck v. Bell is the 1920s-era case that gives government the right to sterilize in the interests of “public health.” The Supreme Court has never overruled it. See my book Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader).

Disclosure: I was a “super-obese” teenager at 320 lbs. My brothers were normal weight. My parents urged me to limit my diet but I ate secretly. Then, on my own, I lost 140 lbs in a single year and have kept if off for 28 years (I’m 10 lb over my 21 year old weight). That was my decision. Imagine if the know-it-alls in DCFS had put me in foster care, supervised by my new rotating parents and caring social workers. Yes, children, this is our Brave New World fast in the making.

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