The AMA Ups Its Stupidity Game
I have always been amazed at how an organization could be so moronic. Take the AMA, for example. They have been bleeding members for decades and yet they continue to alienate doctors. Here’s a recent article:
AMA asks doctors to de-emphasize use of BMI in gauging health and obesity
Interesting. I have always thought the BMI was stupid because it did NOT account for those who are muscular. This sounds great. Then I read this in the article:
The American Medical Association on Tuesday strongly criticized the body mass index, urging doctors to de-emphasize its use in assessing health and obesity and acknowledging that the measurement has been used for “racist exclusion” and has caused “historical harm.”
“BMI cutoffs are based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic White populations and does not consider a person’s gender or ethnicity,” the policy states.
What the living f#ck? Historical harm? The BMI is racist and discriminates against gender? We are now ascribing malice to a measurement.
The rest of the article legitimately describes the problems of using the BMI. Then they put this in;
Additionally, BMI cutoffs don’t appropriately represent risks across racial groups, the subcommittee wrote. For example studies have shown that Asian, Hispanic and Black people have a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes at lower BMIs than white people.
Interesting. A simple calculation doesn’t represent EVERYONE in the universe. That’s weird. Can we stop with the nonsense already? What’s next? Maybe we should get rid of scales because they are racist. When everything is racist then real racism gets diluted and ignored.
Here is a our future (from Wall-E):
AMA does need to be more woke. They need to wake up to how bad they are as an organization.
BMI does not mean much to patients.
I no longer consider looking at my BMI, which indicates that I am obese, because I identify as skinny. I am considering identifying as a cow which is probably more realistic. lol What an insane world we are living in.
Please please don’t make me ever say this again, but – the AMA is right.
On this topic. BMI is based on a drugged up west coast white population in the 70s. They are far too thin and they don’t get the issues correct. Obviously muscular issues or a thing, there is no one in the NFL that plays that has a BMI below 30. Certainly not 25. But basing judgments on how long and how well people will do with their health based on a measure of weight without any data that shows long-term success or failure with their health. A BMI is always going to be wrong in native people of western Canada or lower Alaska. They are heavy and they live forever and they do well. They also rowboats on the open ocean hunting whales. They are a lot more fit than I am – and there may be a benefit to long-term cold exposure. There are just a variables that have not even begun to be looked into. Yes, if we are forced eventually into ignoring race then we will be slaughtering people. Race is one of the very first things we need to know when evaluating a patient. Gender is the second age is the third and really nothing ever changes those set points.
We need to mark that a BMI between 20 and 30 is normal and between 30 and 35 is overweight and above 35 is obese. I think that there would be good data to support those cut off points and we need to get more data on blacks and Hispanics And Orientals but until then we are stuck with this bad data.
I agree with this but ascribing malice and giving it a name (racist) is ridiculous.
100% agree. Even woke idiots can occasionally be right, they are still woke idiots. Their motivation on this point is very clearly not that we need to make blacks and Hispanics better represented and get better data – but that white men are evil.
Orientals? What year is this?
I highly recommend the new book “The New Puritans” by Andrew Doyle. The newly woke society has unleashed AI on us, swatting hands everywhere for fat shaming (calling a toddler chubby), using gendered terms such as waitress (should be waitron) and other ridiculousness. Cotton Mather meets prudish language bots and they have children.
“Mather meets prudish language bots and they have children.” **
** after a meth-fueled orgy.
What’s an AMA?
To paraphrase Doc Holliday from “Tombstone”- “Their stupidity knows no bounds”.
AMA acts like it’s trying to pull a Bud Light, except anybody who gives a $h!t has already left and has been ignoring them for years. Unfortunately, the “younglings” don’t know any better. Does the AMA still give free memberships to medical students? I wonder what their membership numbers would look like if you took out all those medical students who are basically members by default?
It astounds me that they are *STILL* sending me invoices for membership dues….20 years at least now since my medical student membership ran out. All I have to do is see the return address from Wabash St. in Chicago and I rip the envelope in half and put it right on the recycling pile…
Never a member. Been trying for 20 years to get them to stop sending me JAMA. No success.
Ha. Me too.
Sometimes they’ll send something that looks like real mail, and my wife will leave it out for me to look at, but by now I can smell them – I flip it over, see “Wabash,” and into the trash it goes.
Whoa. Wait wait wait wait wait.
BMI is bad because it’s racist, which means it’s harmful to black people (if it were harmful to white people, it wouldn’t be racist, right?).
But black, Hispanic, and American Indian people have bigger problems with DM at lower BMI levels.
So you need to use the BMI to get a head start on treating black, etc. people for DM before it progresses, but you shouldn’t use BMI because it is racist, and that would make you a racist, and nobody wants to be a racist.
But if you don’t treat DM earlier in black, etc. people, and allow it to progress, because you’re not using the BMI, because it’s racist, then you’re racist for not recognizing racial differences and letting black, etc. people get sicker.
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, that specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of the clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.” — Joseph Heller
[insert respectful whistle here]
That’s brilliant!
Why, thank you.