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from the just-another-reason-to-not-be-obese dept.
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Obesity leads to the release of cytokines into the bloodstream which impact the metabolism of breast cancer cells, making them more aggressive as a result. Scientists from Helmholtz Zentrum München, Technical University of Munich (TUM), and Heidelberg University Hospital report on this in 'Cell Metabolism'. The team has already been able to halt this mechanism with an antibody treatment.
The number of people with obesity is increasing rapidly worldwide. The German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) recently reported that according to the WHO the number of children and adolescents with obesity increased tenfold between 1975 and 2016. Severe overweight can lead to various health impairments. Besides inducing cardiovascular diseases, obesity for example also promotes the development of cancer and metastases.
The current study elucidates an as yet unknown mechanism making breast cancer more aggressive. The enzyme ACC1* plays a central role in this process," said Dr. Mauricio Berriel Diaz, deputy director of the Institute for Diabetes and Cancer (IDC) at Helmholtz Zentrum München. He led the study together with Stephan Herzig, director of the IDC and professor for Molecular Metabolic Control at TUM and Heidelberg University Hospital. "ACC1 is a key component of fatty acid synthesis," said Berriel Diaz. "However, its function is impaired by the cytokines leptin and TGF-β." The levels of these cytokines are increased particularly in the blood of severely overweight subjects.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:27PM (14 children)
I completely disagree with your ideas for a remedy. Some other responders have already written more detailed answers why your ideas are bad, but no one has proposed better remedies, so I will.
The answer is better medicine. There's been more research in very recent years into the role of guy bacteria on overall health and metabolism. Basically, you can take two identical twins, give one "good bacteria" and the other "bad bacteria", and one will be relatively fit and other other fat.
We need our medical institutions to do more research on obesity and the factors that influence it, not all of which are completely controllable by personal discipline, and come up with medical cures for it. I personally suspect that aggressive treatments with gut bacteria could alleviate many peoples' problems with obesity. Treatments of this type should be made cheap and readdily available, even publicly funded if necessary, as the dividends in both public health, and the overall economy, would be huge: healthier (non-obese) people would cost us much, much less in healthcare, and they'd be more productive economically, which results in a higher GDP which benefits all of us.
In short, blaming individuals for these problems is self-defeating and unproductive. We should be treating this more like we do with communicable diseases, where we came up with vaccines and pushed everyone to get cheaply vaccinated, resulting in a huge improvement in public health, life expectancy, and economic productivity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:45PM (7 children)
The OP acknowledged real medical solutions:
Guess what, though? People aren't even going to considered being treated when the responsibility for being fat is foisted onto those who are healthy. So, it doesn't matter if you have the medical solution.
Now, you've got 2 choices:
Authoritarian: Force obese people to undergo treatment, just like you want to force people to vaccinate themselves or their children.
Libertarian: Send people signals about the costs to society that they represent (e.g., charge them more); if people don't mind paying for their own obese lifestyle, then fine! That's their own personal choice. Otherwise, hopefully, they'll be persuaded that they need to make changes in their lives (e.g., seek treatment), and will do so voluntarily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:57PM (2 children)
Rational encompasses all the methods of governance and applies them *hopefully* where they are best suited. PS: charging people more is not very libertarian, it is a small step down from authoritarian where the choice is 100% removed. Many people were up in arms about the bag tax, but really they were paying for the bags all the time as hidden costs of their groceries. People are not generally capable of running a full fledged society all by themselves, there is a reason why we need each other. The sum is totally greater than the parts, otherwise we'd still be building houses out of branches and leaves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:02PM (1 child)
I wear a seatbelt because I don't want to die, not because some bureaucrat mandates it.
Because of the mandates, seatbelts have remained pretty stupid in design.
You're implying that without mandates, no safety mechanism would have ever been adopted. What tosh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:08PM
Go have sex with your strawman, it seems to get you off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:16PM (3 children)
Well, I kind of feel like pulling your chain, so let me suggest a (check all that apply)
[x] Authoritarian
[ ] Libertarian
[ ] Technological
[ ] Spiritual
solution. (Anybody other than me miss those form posts?)
I say we take everybody diagnosed with obesity and force them to smoke weed once per day. Some really dank stuff, too.
The thing is, even though I would never do that... it might actually work. I'm not sure how to help people who have an allergy to it, though, such as my roommate.
I'm so tempted to agree with you on anarcho-capitalism that I keep posting about how men aren't angels (and thus require a violently imposed monopoly on contract enforcement). Libertarianism is the best way to let people discover things and find out what works for them, personally. For me, it's weed. As long as I have weed, my performance at work remains better than ever, and my weight maintains itself at a very healthy number with little effort on my part.
If anybody out there is reading this and really needs to lose weight but is frustrated by failure, have a talk with Mary Jane. She'll help you out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @11:25PM (2 children)
It's a terrible idea to give men monopoly over anything.
That's why even contract enforcement should be considered just another service in the market, where anybody can compete; such competition is how members of society cooperate to find the best implementation of any service, and it's the only robust check and balance against dangerous power structures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:34AM (1 child)
Well, let me ask you this. Your conjecture is that warlords will not evolve from a tragedy-of-the-commons situation out of a free market of contract enforcement services. My conjecture is that they will. I'd argue I have a few millennia of evidence of the behavior of man, the tribal animal he is, but I'm also fairly disgusted with the existing government.
I realize that I must try to draw a distinction between a government and a monopoly on contract enforcement. Both are indeed violently imposed monopolies. Governments violently impose a wide array of services from infrastructure to welfare to the efficacy of workers collectively bargaining, in addition to contract enforcement and defense of its borders. I see a contract enforcement monopoly as a shell of a government. Its sole function is to allow contracts to be enforced with violence.
I feel that violence may be a strong word, but I get the impression from our past exchanges we may see eye to eye on its meaning. Violence need not be physical. It need only be the threat of violence. There is no government on the face of the Earth that does not ultimately derive its authority from violence. For example, in the United States, we're told a creation myth as children that the US Government derives authority from the people, because of the threat of violence against the government by the people. Even the Christian god, Yahweh, uses the threat of violence to enforce compliance (though one could argue this is merely a confidence game on the part of his priests). Violence is the ultimate authority from which all other authority derives. Does that sound right to you?
So anyway, that was long and rambling. Here's my actual question. How do we deal with warlords (and priests)? The obvious but incomplete answer is that, as I just observed, they may be checked by the threat of violence against them from non-followers. However, once the warlord has amassed a large enough and capable enough army, I believe he will murder or place in a cage all (other) contract enforcers. How may we prevent a warlord with an army of 51% of the population from being capable of violently imposing on the other 49% of the population?
Man lies, cheats, and steals. Man is violent and tribal, and no contract will stop his violent tribalism. Those who are not part of a violent tribe will find themselves killed by a violent tribe.
I can't find a better answer than waiting at least 100,000 years for man to evolve into a more angelic species, should that be his destiny.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:02AM
The "Tragedy of the Commons" results from a lack of control over a resource.
This outcome implies the need for some means by which to limit usage of said resource, and thus implies some kind of ownership over said resource, of which there are 2 kinds: Authoritarian (government) and Libertarian (property rights). History has led civilization naturally from the simplest, dumbest authoritarianism towards libertarianism; right now, the most productive societies are a hybrid, with the vestiges of ancient authoritarianism hacked to provide the psychological impression that there is something dependable forming the foundation of individual property rights. The truth is that authoritarianism is in utter contradiction to individual property rights, as seen by any number of obvious examples, such as the prohibition of beer in the "Land of the Free".
The American Revolution was a retaliation against the tyranny of a government that had overstepped its delegated mandate; the American Revolution set out to re-establish a proper government that was not a radical brand new one, but rather an improved continuation of the old one.
That is to say that the authority of the various governments of the several States and their federation came not from the threat of violence of The People against the government, but rather from the fact that The People were delegating various authorities to the government (tyrannical overreach of which might well justify retaliation once again).
The thing is, no Person ever had the right to walk into His neighbor's pub and, in the name of Temperance, begin breaking all of the bottles of beer; no Person could have ever delegated such an authority to any government. Ever. It doesn't matter what the "Constitution" says. Clearly, the Prohibition of Beer was an overreach of delegated authority, and the Brits must have been laughing their drunk asses off at the antics going on in the so-called "Land of the Free"!
More explicitly: No. It is not the case that violence is the ultimate authority from which all other authority derives; that's why the "Declaration of Independence" sets as its foundation not violence but rather inalienable rights endowed by the Creator; it's why the "Constitution" speaks of unenumerated rights (there are many more which haven't been mentioned explicitly). A government's supposed authority comes from the delegation of the authorities that are implied by existing rights, and a dispute over such delegation is something to be left to public discussion (e.g., legislation), to adjudication, and—from time to time, as noted by Jefferson—to the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Your question is a very good one, but you must note that your "government" idea does NOT supply an answer. Your government, founded in liberty, outlawed beer for fuck's sake.
Now, the American government was and still is better than many other forms of government, including warlords (which are a form of government). The reason is that the American government introduced as a fundamental principle the notion of checks and balances—competing structures of power; of course, we know these as the branches of the government. Well, take that principle to its most generic: Competition of power structures is what matters; that's why it's a good thing that there is not (and never has been) One World Government; competition, even among self-serving warlords who care not a bit about principles, keeps governments in check.
A monopoly that arises out of Free Market activity, solely by virtue of "do-as-we-agreed" voluntary exchange, is going to be a much different shape than a monopoly that arises from "do-as-I-say" coercion.
Insist that power structures be grown through voluntary exchange; fight tooth-and-nail anybody who would seek to grow a power structure any other way, and work to dismantle existing power structures that have already been grown in that despicable involuntary fashion (ideally, you'd convince people to abandon them in favor of better, liberty-grown organizations; this could be known as "privatization", but that term has been soiled by cronyism that ultimately rests not on voluntary exchange, but on the same old governmental mandate that should be escaped).
When you think of a finished skyscraper, it seems impossible that it was ever constructed—so many parts depend on each other that it must have sprung out of the ether already complete! Well, as we know, there were many intermediate stages during the construction of that massive, intricate structure; there were supports and scaffolding, which were employed to good effect, and then dismantled and forgotten thereafter.
The same will be so for man and his civilization: In 100,000 years, he will live under libertarianism; however, this miracle will result not from him being more angelic, but rather from civilization's libertarian power structures being more fully developed.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @09:47PM (4 children)
It is like the old adage about seeing assholes everywhere, except kind of reversed.
If you see one obese person that might be due to bad life choices. If you see millions of obese people then something bigger is going on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:00PM (1 child)
The difference is cultural.
People look to Government to take care of them from cradle to grave, and to protect them even from mean words like "fatty".
We know that high-fructose corn syrup is in everything now, and then dairy and cheese is in everything now. Why? Well, the U.S. government subsidizes corn, makes it expensive to import normal sugar, pushed for a surplus of cheese and helped market that surplus to American consumers, etc. Now, the government wants to solve the issue by forcing everyone to pay for the fatties, etc.
Your "something bigger" is right there: Big Government, cradle-to-grave, centralized planning and manipulation of society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 24 2017, @10:03PM
You're too crazy to take seriously anymore.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:17AM (1 child)
I see what you did there.
Maybe it was aliens. And subliminal messages. Probably fluoridation too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:42PM
No
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Thursday October 26 2017, @08:38PM
The more I dig into this issue the more complicated it gets. For some, gut bacteria are part of the puzzle, for others sun exposure and B vitamins help bring the metabolism back to a healthy norm. And then there's exercise, etc., etc.
A huge piece of the puzzle is the high level of sugar in the modern diet. There's been some fascinating research done over the last ten years about how the body metabolizes fructose (spoiler alert: it's a toxin). For some, simply eliminating added sugar from the diet results in significant weight loss. Unfortunately 80% of processed food contains added sugar, so it ain't easy getting it out of your diet. When you become a sugar nazi it's depressing how many foods you can't eat anymore.
I'm not buying the "eat less, move more" personal responsibility line anymore. It's not that simple. The food manufacturers know what's going on, but adding sugar gets people to eat more product and increases the sacred profits (peace be upon them). Part of the solution may have to be dragging these people into the streets and hanging them with the guts of Wall Street banksters.