By definition, obesity is a disease

The argument

This argument turns on a definitional test rather than on medical evidence about the causes or treatment of obesity. It begins from a definition of disease as a condition producing symptoms that are not activated by injury — that is, a condition whose pathology arises from the body's own functioning rather than from external trauma. The claim is that obesity satisfies that test. Obesity is a condition that produces symptoms. Proponents of this position note that although obesity can lead to injury, and is frequently associated with harms that present like injuries, it is not itself an injury: nothing is done to the body from outside to bring the condition about in the way a fracture or a wound is caused. Obesity therefore falls on the disease side of the injury/disease line the definition draws, and does so without any further evidence being required. Because the argument is definitional, its force does not depend on resolving contested empirical questions about whether obesity is chiefly a matter of behaviour, environment, genetics, or some combination of these. Proponents argue that whatever the causal story turns out to be, the classification follows from a definition already in general use: a symptomatic, non-injury condition is a disease. On this account those who resist calling obesity a disease are not disputing the definition itself, but declining to apply it consistently in this one case, and the argument invites them to say which part of the definition they mean to reject.

Context

Obesity affects many of our organs including our hearts, gallbladders and livers. It produces symptoms like chest pain, sleep apnea, gallbladder problems, clogged arteries and veins, and poor liver function.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Obesity is very serious and should be treated with importance, but it does not fit into the definition of a disease. A disease is "a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific signs or symptoms or that affects a specific location and is not simply a direct result of physical injury." As obesity is the result of lifestyle choices, rather than being a disorder, it cannot be classified as a disease.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] If we are going by the definition of a disease, obesity is not one.