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Comment & Response
August 2014

Drug Treatment of Obesity—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1Center for Medicine and the Media, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Lebanon, New Hampshire
JAMA Intern Med. 2014;174(8):1415-1416. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.1635

In Reply The Obesity Society and the Obesity Action Coalition are mistaken. Our article was motivated by genuine concern for the health of people living with obesity, regardless of how it is classified. Although it is true that the American Medical Association now calls obesity a disease, the association did so against the advice of its own Council on Science and Public Health. The council stated “opinions within the medical profession have been divided for a number of years on whether obesity should be considered a disease, rather than a condition or disease risk factor.”1(p2) We agree with the council’s conclusion that “it is unclear that recognizing obesity as a disease, as opposed to a ‘condition’ or ‘disorder’ will result in improved health outcomes.”1(p6)

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