ABC Helps Officials Beef About Their Own Statistics

Free Market Project ^ | 6/3/2005 | Dan Gainor

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‘World News Tonight’ weighs in on the side of the Centers for Disease Control about obesity.

by Dan Gainor June 3, 2005

The heavy debate over the recent lower estimates of deaths caused by obesity continued in the media following a press conference by the Centers for Disease Control. ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’ undermined CDC critics in its June 2, 2005 story. Anchor Elizabeth Vargas opened by stating the government position as fact: “Being overweight is extremely bad for your health no matter what the new numbers say.”

Both sides of the obesity debate have focused heavily on a new study about death rates ever since its April 20, 2005, release. The study was the second adjustment to the numbers. Initially, the Centers for Disease Control had blamed obesity for 400,000 annual deaths. That was later revised down to 365,000, but the latest study showed those numbers were still far too high and that the new figure was 112,000. That number, however, had to be adjusted to include people who actually saw benefits from a few extra pounds, and the adjusted total came to about 26,000 deaths. The CDC even said more people died from being underweight – that total was 34,000.

The CDC has been unhappy with those numbers from the moment they were released. According to the Associated Press on April 20, 2005: CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said because of the uncertainty in calculating the health effects of being overweight, the CDC is not going to use the brand-new figure of 25,814 in its public awareness campaigns and is not going to scale back its fight against obesity.”

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Read down, look who ABC uses as an "independent expert." He works for the CDC.

[Stevenc131]

It was actually a pretty pathetic performance by both the CDC and ABC. The CDC has been gearing up for a campaign against obesity which is supposed to huge in scope, something like the anti-tobacco effort. The new study threw a very large monkey wrench into the machinery.

The CDC just basically said they were going to ignore the scientific evidence and continue on with their planned campaign. ABC was falling all over themselves to try to help out and the ABC reporter was absolutely breathless in some places she was talking so hard trying to reinforce the CDC position. There was no effort at all by ABC to ask the CDC why they were taking a position opposite of the facts.