An obesity expert at the Boston Children's Hospital, Dr. David Ludwig, co-wrote, with Lindsey Murtagh, she being a lawyer and researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health, an article recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In that article the authors opined that parents of severely obese children should lose their custody rights due to not controlling the weight of their children.
Dr. Ludwig wrote, “In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems. State intervention may serve the best interests of many children with life-threatening obesity, comprising the only realistic way to control harmful behaviors.”
Taking away someone's fat kids seems a bit harsh to me. I can see where some sort of Child Protective Services intervention might be a good thing. An intervention where the parents are shown how to properly feed their kids.
But, there are already cases of kids being put in foster care due to being obese. Dr. Ludvig gave an example of a girl treated in at Boston Children's Hospital. A 3 year old girl already weighing 90 pounds was brought to the hospital for treatment. By the age of 12 the girl weighed more than 400 pounds, with high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure and sleep apnea. The state took the girl away from the parents and put her in foster care where she was put on a diet, losing 130 pounds.
Other kids in other states have been taken from their parents due to being obese. A mom in South Carolina lost custody of her 14 year old boy who weighed 555 pounds. There have been cases in Texas, New York, New Mexico and California where obesity has been cited as the reason for parental loss of custody.
Childhood obesity in America is nearing a crisis level. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (The CDC) reports that over 12 million American kids are currently obese. With 2 million American kids at a morbidly obese level.
