Obesity has significant impacts on the body

The argument

Whether obesity counts as a disease depends on what a disease is taken to be, and the usual answer is a condition of the body that impairs its functioning and produces identifiable harm. Obesity meets that description on the evidence of what it causes. It can cause heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer — conditions that are themselves unambiguously diseases, that are among the leading causes of death, and that affect the cardiovascular, metabolic and cellular systems respectively. A bodily state producing outcomes of that kind is not a lifestyle characteristic or a question of appearance; it is pathology, acting through the body in the way other diseases act. The economic record registers the same thing from another direction. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008, and the medical cost for people with obesity or morbid obesity was $1,429 higher than for those of a healthy weight. Figures of that size are a measurement of medical need: they exist because people with the condition require treatment, and they require treatment because something in the body is going wrong that medicine has to address. A condition generating a per-person treatment cost and a national bill comparable to those of recognised diseases is placing the same kind of demand on medicine that recognised diseases place. Proponents of this position therefore argue that the classification should follow the evidence rather than the intuition. Obesity harms the body through identifiable mechanisms, causes other diseases, and requires sustained medical treatment at considerable cost. Judged by the standards applied to any other condition, that is sufficient: obesity is just as serious as a disease, which is to say that obesity is a disease.

Context

Obesity causes joint pain, liver, heart, and colon diseases, and even breathing problems. With all of these consequences, obesity must be a disease.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Obesity is a serious problem, especially in America. Not only are there countless health risks, but thousands of people also die each year due to obesity. However, thousands of people die from car accidents and shootings. Just because something has an effect on human bodies, doesn't make it a disease. For example, food poisoning has numerous symptoms such as stomach pain, diarrhoea, and vomiting. It can even lead to death in some cases. Food poisoning is due to ingesting spoiled food or drink, so that means it is caused by the human's actions. Obesity has numerous symptoms, can end in death, and is caused by a person's actions. Neither are a disease.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Many things have physical symptoms and many can cause death. This does not mean they are all diseases.