‘Morally unreasonable’ to tackle childhood obesity with weight loss jabs, Chris Whitty says
Professor Sir Chris Whitty has condemned the practice of allowing children to become obese and then prescribing them weight-loss injections when they become adults, describing it as “morally unreasonable”.
England’s chief health officer has warned that the country risks being perceived as having “failed disastrously” on childhood obesity and believes the issue “stores up too many problems for the future”.
talking on Prevention is the New Treatment In the podcast with former health ministers Steve Brine and Lord Bethell, Sir Chris drew a sharp contrast to other public health efforts.
“I think we’ll be considered to have done a good job on smoking and vaping, and hopefully we’ve done a moderately good job on air pollution; I definitely think there’s more we can do,” he said.
“I think we’re going to see that we fail, and if we’re not careful, we’re going to fail catastrophically on childhood obesity, and that’s just storing up a lot of problems for the future.”
Elaborating further on his strong stance, he argued that “it is morally unreasonable and medically unreasonable to allow childhood obesity in deprived areas in this country and then sentence people to GLP-1 agonists at the age of 18 for the rest of their lives.”
The stark reality of this challenge has been highlighted by the 2024 Health Survey for England, which found that 15 per cent of children aged 2 to 15 are currently living with obesity.
This rate covers 10 percent of children ages 2 to 4 and rises to 17 percent of children ages 13 to 15.
In the richest parts of England, 8 per cent of children aged 11 to 15 were living with obesity, while in the poorest areas the rate was 30 per cent.
Sir Chris said childhood obesity figures were “going backwards”.
He continued: “If people think we don’t have to worry about rising child obesity anymore because of personalized medicine, I think that’s crazy.”
He was asked about the UK National Screening Committee’s advice on prostate cancer; This will ensure that only a few thousand high-risk men with the gene mutation will be screened for the disease.
Sir Chris said “the numbers don’t add up” for the general population.
“I think people think it’s an immediate development; it’s actually quite a delayed development and a relatively modest development, but it’s a real development.
“For people being treated for prostate cancer with current treatments, go against that – maybe remove the prostate or do radical radiotherapy where you would irradiate.
“Approximately 20 percent of people who undergo radical prostatectomy will experience severe urinary incontinence from the day after treatment, and up to 60 percent will have lifelong erection problems, so they will never be able to have an erection from that moment on.
“And if it is radical radiotherapy, they have a much lower rate of urinary problems, but a higher rate of fecal incontinence and still a significant rate of erectile dysfunction – slightly lower than radical prostatectomy and potentially reversible after a few years.
“Now some guys say, ‘This is a risk I’m willing to take, because what’s really important to me is seeing my grandchildren in college,’ or whatever it is.
“Other men say, ‘Actually, given such a huge benefit of mortality, the really quite significant risks of something that would, by my own reckoning, have a major impact on my ability to live an enjoyable life are too high a price to pay.’
“And so the view of the screening committee was that the Government recommended that people get this test and go that route. The numbers were not sufficient for the general population.”
