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"....the general consensus is that if they can’t find an external cause of death, and the deceased happens to be higher-weight, the Medical Examiner or Coroner is likely to simply rule it as a “natural” death due to 'complications of ob*sity.'"
This is exactly why I think it is an absolute travesty that medical professionals are given god complexes and taught to never say "I don't know." No one knows everything. But when they pretend they do, people die. And even in death, these providers can't give patients the respect and decency of evidence-based care.
This crap has infuriated me since I learned about it in the '90s. Fat person dies? It was the fat! Could there be another cause? NO! It's the fat!
I think the most egregious example of this BS is when people die on the operating table, especially from weight loss surgery that they've been talked into having. Are there higher risks for surgery for people who are very fat? Sometimes. But they're not risks that thinner people are exempt from. So when fat people die from WLS, it was especially common in the '90s and '00s to see statements like, "If only they'd had the surgery earlier! We could have saved their life!" Or, instead, they could have encouraged non-weight-oriented health changes which are more likely to work and *not frikkin' kill people*. Add to that more recent research that shows that the higher your body weight when you get WLS, the more likely you are to have serious complications, including death.
Argh. Sorry. It double infuriates me that the whole "died from ob*sity" is a favorite trope of extreme fatphobes. "My [relative/friend/dog walker's sister-in-law/whoever] died from ob*sity! I hate fat people because they'll die of it, too!" Uh-huh. (I looked up 'projection' in the dictionary and there was a picture of a fatphobe.)
Fat people may (or may not) have higher risks of various things, but that doesn't make weight the cause of anything. I seem to keep repeating this a lot recently: A risk factor is not a cause. And the number of "higher risks" are poorly constructed correlations. As Ragen says over and over and over again, it's rare for there to be considerations for socio-economic factors and weight cycling. The latter is especially aggravating as more and more research shows weight cycling is more damaging to health than being at even the highest weights and staying at that weight.
I had a family member pass away recently of heart failure, and everyone around blamed his weight. Maybe his weight did contribute--but he had also smoked much of his life, was an alcoholic, had a congenital heart condition, and had suffered a devastating childhood illness that had further damaged his heart. For some reason none of that got talked about (and while he didn't reach average life expectancy for his demographic, he was hardly young. He'd made it a good long while despite everything).
I'm sorry for your loss. I understand this so much.
Some of the thinner friends of mine have far more serious health issues than I do. My health isn't that great - I'm getting old, which itself is a risk factor for just about everything. But unlike my sicker friends I haven't smoked and was never much of a drinker, and never got into any kind of drugs.
I know that's not the same as having congenital conditions but my point isn't to make a comparison to or shame your relative, but to reinforce that there are some controllable risk factors that are far, far more riskier than body weight.
Thank you for this. I had a friend die this year at age 43 of a sudden cardiac event and the autopsy report made a similar finding. This despite her GP being clear that there were no indicators of ill health other than a “pre-diabetic” categorisation. I have been so troubled by this because, in addition to a history of trauma, my friend was at the time on Ozempic, antidepressants, and an implant for treatment of opioid dependence. It blows my mind that these factors didn’t appear to have been considered in the coroner’s report. And it concerns me that my friends wife now feels a tremendous pressure to lose weight herself because of this finding. I am glad that you are having these conversations!
If the implant was a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS), those can cause sudden cardiac events - check out The Danger Within Us by Jeanne Lenzer for some scary stuff about how little oversight there is of the medical device industry.
It was Lisa Marie. Priscilla Presley is still alive. I didn't know that Lisa Marie died from Bariatric surgery. I thought it was the heart condition her Dad died of. Yet another reason not to allow Bariatric surgery.
"According to her autopsy report, Presley died of "small bowel obstruction" caused by a bariatric surgery she had undergone. The autopsy stated that the opioids in her system did not contribute to her death."
This had happened to my mom back in 1997. She died of pneumonia in the hospital and on her death certificate it states her death was also caused by “complications of morbid ob*sity.” So two “reasons” of death were given.
Also, if she had received proper medical care, and surgeons would have operated on her without requiring her to lose weight, she may have lived longer. She passed right before she was to turn 62.
Even after death, the hospital rushed us to get her body out of their morgue because she didn’t fit into the freezer drawer. We also had to pay more for a bigger casket, plot, etc. It was horrible and very traumatic and I will never forget how the medical system failed my mom.
I am sorry for these womens' loss and their family and loved ones' loss. And I'm sorry their deaths are carried out so publicly. I am however appreciative that their personal stories, even following through to their deaths, have a chance to enlighten our view of anti-fat bias and its harm. It seems to me that if nothing points to a specific cause, that means they don't know the cause. A complication of anything related to disease, in order to lead to death, must have a cause. Do the authorities just not care?
So standard practice is any fat person who doesn't die of a bullet, stab wound, bomb explosion, or other obvious and visibly undeniable external cause died of being fat. Some rigorous science there. I guess I'll start that diet immediately.
The real lesson to be learned is, apparently, that if you want to kill a fat person without being caught, poison them and they'll just blame it on their weight.
Either way, it serves their purpose, to artificially inflate the made-up "death by obesity" stats to justify further fat bigotry. You know, for our own good. When they oink at us, they're not bring jerks, they're being heroes!
The cause of my sister's death in 2011 was well known -- respiratory failure after a leg fracture. Yet the medical examiner felt the need to add "morbid obesity" to the death certificate.
The incidents that led to her death -- a fall in the bathtub, followed by a bone marrow embolism that got into her lungs -- are not related to weight and happen in lower-weight people all the time. (In fact, if this sequence rings a faint bell, you might have read the classic novel "A Separate Peace," in which a teenage boy character dies from the same thing.)
Her weight had nothing to do with her death. I don't know why the ME felt compelled to put it in. At the time, I thought briefly about asking for a revised certificate, but there were a lot of other fires to put out just then.
"....the general consensus is that if they can’t find an external cause of death, and the deceased happens to be higher-weight, the Medical Examiner or Coroner is likely to simply rule it as a “natural” death due to 'complications of ob*sity.'"
This is exactly why I think it is an absolute travesty that medical professionals are given god complexes and taught to never say "I don't know." No one knows everything. But when they pretend they do, people die. And even in death, these providers can't give patients the respect and decency of evidence-based care.
Rest in peace, Ms. Mallory and Ms. Hundley.
This crap has infuriated me since I learned about it in the '90s. Fat person dies? It was the fat! Could there be another cause? NO! It's the fat!
I think the most egregious example of this BS is when people die on the operating table, especially from weight loss surgery that they've been talked into having. Are there higher risks for surgery for people who are very fat? Sometimes. But they're not risks that thinner people are exempt from. So when fat people die from WLS, it was especially common in the '90s and '00s to see statements like, "If only they'd had the surgery earlier! We could have saved their life!" Or, instead, they could have encouraged non-weight-oriented health changes which are more likely to work and *not frikkin' kill people*. Add to that more recent research that shows that the higher your body weight when you get WLS, the more likely you are to have serious complications, including death.
Argh. Sorry. It double infuriates me that the whole "died from ob*sity" is a favorite trope of extreme fatphobes. "My [relative/friend/dog walker's sister-in-law/whoever] died from ob*sity! I hate fat people because they'll die of it, too!" Uh-huh. (I looked up 'projection' in the dictionary and there was a picture of a fatphobe.)
Fat people may (or may not) have higher risks of various things, but that doesn't make weight the cause of anything. I seem to keep repeating this a lot recently: A risk factor is not a cause. And the number of "higher risks" are poorly constructed correlations. As Ragen says over and over and over again, it's rare for there to be considerations for socio-economic factors and weight cycling. The latter is especially aggravating as more and more research shows weight cycling is more damaging to health than being at even the highest weights and staying at that weight.
I had a family member pass away recently of heart failure, and everyone around blamed his weight. Maybe his weight did contribute--but he had also smoked much of his life, was an alcoholic, had a congenital heart condition, and had suffered a devastating childhood illness that had further damaged his heart. For some reason none of that got talked about (and while he didn't reach average life expectancy for his demographic, he was hardly young. He'd made it a good long while despite everything).
I'm sorry for your loss. I understand this so much.
Some of the thinner friends of mine have far more serious health issues than I do. My health isn't that great - I'm getting old, which itself is a risk factor for just about everything. But unlike my sicker friends I haven't smoked and was never much of a drinker, and never got into any kind of drugs.
I know that's not the same as having congenital conditions but my point isn't to make a comparison to or shame your relative, but to reinforce that there are some controllable risk factors that are far, far more riskier than body weight.
Thank you for this. I had a friend die this year at age 43 of a sudden cardiac event and the autopsy report made a similar finding. This despite her GP being clear that there were no indicators of ill health other than a “pre-diabetic” categorisation. I have been so troubled by this because, in addition to a history of trauma, my friend was at the time on Ozempic, antidepressants, and an implant for treatment of opioid dependence. It blows my mind that these factors didn’t appear to have been considered in the coroner’s report. And it concerns me that my friends wife now feels a tremendous pressure to lose weight herself because of this finding. I am glad that you are having these conversations!
If the implant was a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS), those can cause sudden cardiac events - check out The Danger Within Us by Jeanne Lenzer for some scary stuff about how little oversight there is of the medical device industry.
On the other hand, the fact that Lisa Marie Presley’s death was caused by delayed complications of weight loss surgery received almost zero press.
I think it was Lisa Marie?
I think you’re right, thanks!
It was Lisa Marie. Priscilla Presley is still alive. I didn't know that Lisa Marie died from Bariatric surgery. I thought it was the heart condition her Dad died of. Yet another reason not to allow Bariatric surgery.
Wikipedia says, with citations:
"According to her autopsy report, Presley died of "small bowel obstruction" caused by a bariatric surgery she had undergone. The autopsy stated that the opioids in her system did not contribute to her death."
Yeah. And the surgeons have been pushing bariatric surgery on me. More evidence it is not a great idea.
This had happened to my mom back in 1997. She died of pneumonia in the hospital and on her death certificate it states her death was also caused by “complications of morbid ob*sity.” So two “reasons” of death were given.
Also, if she had received proper medical care, and surgeons would have operated on her without requiring her to lose weight, she may have lived longer. She passed right before she was to turn 62.
Even after death, the hospital rushed us to get her body out of their morgue because she didn’t fit into the freezer drawer. We also had to pay more for a bigger casket, plot, etc. It was horrible and very traumatic and I will never forget how the medical system failed my mom.
I am sorry for these womens' loss and their family and loved ones' loss. And I'm sorry their deaths are carried out so publicly. I am however appreciative that their personal stories, even following through to their deaths, have a chance to enlighten our view of anti-fat bias and its harm. It seems to me that if nothing points to a specific cause, that means they don't know the cause. A complication of anything related to disease, in order to lead to death, must have a cause. Do the authorities just not care?
So standard practice is any fat person who doesn't die of a bullet, stab wound, bomb explosion, or other obvious and visibly undeniable external cause died of being fat. Some rigorous science there. I guess I'll start that diet immediately.
The real lesson to be learned is, apparently, that if you want to kill a fat person without being caught, poison them and they'll just blame it on their weight.
Oh, no no no- I’m sure they’d list the physical trauma as primary cause of death, and still “complications of ob*sity” as a secondary!
Either way, it serves their purpose, to artificially inflate the made-up "death by obesity" stats to justify further fat bigotry. You know, for our own good. When they oink at us, they're not bring jerks, they're being heroes!
The cause of my sister's death in 2011 was well known -- respiratory failure after a leg fracture. Yet the medical examiner felt the need to add "morbid obesity" to the death certificate.
The incidents that led to her death -- a fall in the bathtub, followed by a bone marrow embolism that got into her lungs -- are not related to weight and happen in lower-weight people all the time. (In fact, if this sequence rings a faint bell, you might have read the classic novel "A Separate Peace," in which a teenage boy character dies from the same thing.)
Her weight had nothing to do with her death. I don't know why the ME felt compelled to put it in. At the time, I thought briefly about asking for a revised certificate, but there were a lot of other fires to put out just then.
Thank you for this, Ragen. Well said and so important.
Very tragic. Thank you for sharing their stories. I also want to compliment you on the pace of reading this episode! 🥰💕 Well done! 🤗
Thank you for your comment and your feedback on reading speed - I'm trying hard to get better!
Your hard work is paying off! ❤️
Excellent coverage of the heartbreaking failure of our medical system to use science for people even in death. RIP beautiful souls, gone too soon.