Madame Thursday

Jun. 27, 2012 at 5:29pm with 280 notes

Reblogged from therotund

[Image: A poster infographic entitled, “FDA approves the first diet drug in over 10 years, BELVIQ.” Two bathroom-door are used stand for fat people. There are two large symbols at the top, one red and one bright pink.

Between them is the text: A 300lbs person with Type 2 Diabetes has a 36% chance of losing 5% of the weight after 52 or 104 weeks of taking the drug.

16% of patients given the placebo in the clinical trials also lost 5% of their body mass after 52 or 104 weeks.

Beneath is the text: “What does 36% of people losing 5% of their weight look like?” with a graphic showing . 50 smaller fat people symbols are shown. 18 of them are pink and 32 of them are red.

Beneath that is the text: “When the FDA rejected the drug in 2010 they called the weight loss promise of Belviq, “marginal”. The 36% who lose weight will need to take the drug forever to maintain the 5% reduction. Marginal is a good enough when fat shaming.”]

red3blog:

Good Enough: A visual representation of the weight loss promises of Belviq, a new diet drug just approved the FDA.

And lets not forget rave reviews like these…

“Side effects with the drug include depression, migraine and memory lapses.” -Associated Press

“People taking Belviq were twice as likely to have neuropsychiatric and cognitive side effects.” -ABC News

“…only achieving modest weight loss in clinical studies…” -Washington Post

“[Stock photo of a fat person from the neck down]” -CNN

“Clearly [Belviq] is only effective in some cases…” -Dr. Barry Popkin, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

“…the effects are moderate at best.” -Dr. Robert Eckel, University of Colorado-Denver

As usual, the standard with the medicalizing stigmatization of fat people is “good enough” and “safe enough”. This also gives the diet industry a chance to shout about how a 5% reduction in weight has actually been shown to be enormously beneficial as if that proves their case. If I lost 5% of my body weight, I’d still be fat enough to be harassed to lose 5% of my body weight. Significant benefits from such a marginal weight loss just suggests that body weight isn’t actually a dominant factor. Yet, the diet industry insists this means they need to make more billions than they already are promising massive weight loss, but settling for 5%.

Maybe. At least within 2 years. Its not like people haven’t been shown to regain weight past 2 years. I mean, other than it has been shown that this happens.

I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry at this. Because it just makes me tired. It makes me tired that there’s an industry so dedicated to making money off of telling me I need to lose weight and then offering me products that don’t work, don’t work well, or cause dangerous side effects and reaping the profits.

Never forget. That “you need to lose 5%!” cry from the fat shamers and fat haters? It has an industry backing it, who is invested and benefits from having so called scientific and impartial sources fanning the flames of the obesity scaremongering epidemic we’re currently in.

Somebody is making shit tons of cash off this, don’t forget that. Somebody who basically gets a captive market because right now everyone, up to the first lady, is participating in making sure we hate fat and will try anything to get rid of it.

I think I’m gonna go do something that doesn’t make me get so angry I start seeing gray spots across my vision.