NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) has expressed its opinion that the word ‘obesity’ is a derogatory one and health care professionals have been asked to refrain from using the word to describe those who are, well, how shall we put it: obese. The statistics show that one quarter of British people are obese and NICE says that using this word is not helping the situation.
The organisation suggest that rather than refer to obese patients as ‘obese',it would be in the best interests of both the patients and the health professionals to lay the emphasis on their potential to achieve a healthy weight. Despite the fact that the organisation deems the word suitable for use among doctors and other health care workers, they feel that use of the word should be avoided when dealing with obese patients directly.
It really does not matter what word is used to describe the obese, so long as they are made absolutely fully aware of how harmful being obese actually is to their health. If the point of this is to mollycoddle patients who might be offended by being told that they have a serious health condition, then the recommendation is misplaced. Language is dynamic and we would never support the continued use of a word that, outside the medical community, had become a derogatory term, but patients must be made aware of the consequences of persisting with the unhealthy lifestyle that got them to that position in the first place. The word used to describe the condition is immaterial.