Hot Lipid Pneumonitis: The Coming Pandemic by Pat Conrad MD
With every day and every new story I become more enamored of minding my own business, more in favor of letting people do whatever the hell they want, and more convinced that modern medicine cannot and probably should not attempt to cure all of society’s ever-enlarging crop of self-inflicted ills.
Just wait till the statin manufacturer/anti-smoking/childhood nutrition lobby gets hold of this. Can you imagine the new PSA’s, surgeon general warning labels, product liability suits, state-driven mandatory CME’s, new triage questionnaire screenings, and follow-on cessation programs and drugs this craze could produce?
Doug: I think the point is to equate eating a french fry with smoking a cigarette. they are BOTH unhealthy. NOT to start a new trend.
I am curious, since you are becoming “…more in favor of letting people do whatever the hell they want…”, what role do you think physicians should play, if any, in promoting healthy behavior in patients? In my opinion, a sizable portion of the general public makes poor decisions in many arenas including health and I certainly don’t think I would be doing a good job in my role as a health adviser/physician if I were to help patients “do whatever the hell they want” by giving them carte blanche with medical items such as narcotics and antibiotics.
The video clip is a man apparently doing his own home-grown public service announcement telling people that he thinks it is stupid to smoke french fries. That seems a reasonable position. I doubt smoking french fries will become a significant health concern and therefore I don’t think that we need to be too concerned about regulation from any organization regarding it. There are it seems to me, bigger fish to fry. Dog bites man.
I think the proper role of the physician is collaborative, to give his best counsel to a patient who is requesting it, say, one seeking advice on how to pull his tongue out of his cheek.
What the patient does with that advice is his business.