Farm Accident Digest

January 8th, 2004

Another terrible AP report about what appear to be money and control motivated conclusions drawn from a study. Here's the headline:

"Study: Obesity raising disability rate"

Pretty definite sounding, ain't they? So what are the actual facts of the study?

For those 30- to 39-years-old, the number reporting disabilities increased from 118 per 10,000 people to 182 per 10,000 people from 1984 to 1996. Among those 40- to 49-years-old, the number rose from 212 per 10,000 to 278 per 10,000 in the same period.
[...]
The number of cases stemming from musculoskeletal problems and diabetes grew more rapidly than those from other problems during the length of the study. The proportion that were diabetes-related doubled.

So what does obesity have to do with all this? Let me quote two other bits from the article.

Disability rates rose sharply in the last two decades among those under 60, and obesity appears to be the main reason, according to a study released Thursday.
[...]
The leading causes of disability are mental illness and musculoskeletal problems - such as chronic back pain - which are linked to obesity.

Bold tags added by me because the "b" reminds me of a big, fat belly. Notice there is no direct link. They merely saw conditions which obesity could cause or make worse and decided obesity must be the main culprit for all of it. Real scientific. Of all of them, I'll give them the increase in diabetes which has the strongest causation to obesity. Otherwise, it's really not as definite as the headline or the introduction would make you think. It gets a lot more indefinite as you read more.

The ballooning obesity problem isn't the only culprit, the study said.

The growth in disability could be the result of increased incentives to report disability and could be linked to advancing medical technology, the report said. Medical advances have saved people who normally would have died, but many end up needing help and going on disability.

So it could be many things; they don't know. They just picked obesity. Why? Gee, I hope it has nothing to do with the fact that the "Do something! Anything!" cries of the moment all involve obesity. I'd hate to think they made weak links seem strong just to get some political clout or pork. Even worse would be to make me continue using these annoyingly sarcastic sentences.