Ethical Issues in Biomedical Weight Stigma Reduction Efforts

• In Event: (Re)generating Dialogues between STS and Bioethics

Abstract

In Canada, fat people face discrimination in healthcare, education, employment and in their everyday interactions and personal relationships. Activists and social theorists have long called attention to this problem, but recently weight stigma has also emerged as a pressing concern for those working in the field of healthcare. However, these weight stigma reduction efforts within the healthcare community often do not critically examine the foundational assumptions of medical practice that contribute to stigmatizing fat people. This paper uses a social constructionist approach to illness to analyse a recent example of this lack of critical reflection in the Canadian Obesity Network’s third weight bias summit in 2016. The summit agreed to classify obesity as a chronic disease even while it recognized that the foundation for obesity classification, the body mass index (BMI) scale, was flawed and should not be used to diagnose obesity. The summit report does not adequately explain how we can identify obesity as a chronic disease, while the foundation for classifying someone as obese is itself in question. These well intended efforts, if left unexamined, have the capacity to reproduce and perpetuate the very stigma they are trying to fight against.

Author

• Ekaterina Huybregts, Carleton University