A radical cure for obesity.

[SackAttack]

The cure. (http://www.pnmj.org/0032205_curing_obesity.asp)

Did a search, and nothin' came up, so my apologies if this has already been posted.

Kind of a horrifying read on more levels than I can count, although I found this particular snippet particularly insulting:

Should sufficient strides be made in this field, it could be monumental in the motivational efforts of the medical community to bring clinically obese people to a sufficient level of fitness by rewarding such people with permission to procreate and switching on the control valves implanted in the subject.

and...

The State of California has established commitment to this way of thinking - and this researcher only hopes that the rest of the nation follows suit.

"Permission to procreate?" I don't even know where to start, other than to suggest that people who support eugenics - and this character in particular - really ought to be the first ones in line for sterilization.

When they said "the road to hell is paved with good intentions," I'm fairly certain this is the kind of thing that was meant.

[dawgfan]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but is this not a voluntary program?

[SackAttack]

The program is of less concern to me than Williams' attitude about it, frankly.

Voluntary is one thing, but Williams seems to think it ought to be compulsory.

[sterlingice]

I figured this would be some radical idea like "eat less and exercise more".

SI

[Lathum]

That's some 1984 big brother stuff going on there.

[cody8200]

Ugh, his non-chalant attitude about this is abhorrant. Obese homo sapiens are apparently genetically "inferior"...I just thought it was because they didn;t want to do exercise and it was there right not to.

[Huckleberry]

This is why I waited until after I had kids to start getting fat. You've got to have a plan, people.

[Anthony]

South Beach works. i've lost 24 lbs. in 6 weeks. thanks Subby, you sweet teddy bear.

[Arles]

This is pretty disturbing.

[Huckleberry]

Of course it's disturbing. Disturbing because it's a huge waste of time. Look around you. The urbanization of the world has put an end to human natural selection. Everywhere I look, stupid fat people have found other stupid fat people to reproduce with. With so many people living so close to each other, it's easier to find another repulsive idiot.


:D

[Farrah Whitworth-Rahn]

I think this is a hoax.

http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006490 (last item)


A Big Fat Hoax (http://www.pnmj.org/0032205_curing_obesity.asp)
Yesterday blogger Vilmar Tavares (warning: link (http://www.barking-moonbat.com/index.php/weblog/the_final_obesity_solution/) includes foul language) e-mailed us a link to a story in the Pacific Northwest Medical Journal titled "Curing Obesity Through Sterility: California's Controversial Program Under the Microscope":

Beginning last November, the city of San Francisco began a program whereupon clinically obese men between the ages of 18 and 55 could undergo a procedure whereupon approximately 1/2 an inch is removed from each vas and the ends are sealed--commonly referred to as a vasectomy--completely free of charge. The overwhelming turnout led the State of California to follow suit, and now California is the first state in the Union to offer state-funded vasectomies to men who have been diagnosed as obese. . . .

By offering such a highly effective form of birth control freely to men who, by clinical diagnosis, have been deemed genetically inferior to the normalized median of homo sapien development, such a gene line would effectively be eliminated.

This sounded about as believable as "monkeyfishing (http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=95000596#hoax)," so we set about looking for evidence that this was a hoax. The site certainly looked realistic; its homepage (http://www.pnmj.org/) linked to other articles that didn't sound phony, and the contact page (http://www.pnmj.org/contact1.asp) gave a Seattle-area number for the Pacific Northwest Medical Association that answered with what seemed to be a functioning voicemail system.

On the other hand, a Factiva search turned up no references to the vasectomies-for-blimps program, nor any to the Pacific Northwest Medical Journal or the association. Online phone books contain no listing for either the journal or the association, and a Google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22pacific+northwest+medical+journal%22) turns up nothing but links to the journal on a humor site called Broken Newz.

We went to Network Solutions (http://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/whois/index.jhtml) and checked the Whois entry for the pnmj.org domain, which turns out to be registered to "KLAF Television" of Shreveport, La., no address or phone number given. We thought: KLAF, as in K-laugh? But it turns out there is a KLAF (http://www.klaf.com/)--in Lafayette, a 212-mile drive (http://maps.yahoo.com/dd_result?ed=xTowJeV.wimQQVd6MsEKU7USFw--&csz=shreveport%2C+la&country=us&tcsz=lafayette%2C+la&tcountry=us) from Shreveport.

Reader Michael Segal found the proof that it's a hoax. The contact page at Broken Newz (http://www.brokennewz.com/contact/) lists among its contributors Bill Doty and Joe Peacock, whose names appear in the "medical journal" article as a "nationally recognized geneticist" and "clinician," respectively.

Segal also tracked some of the real-looking articles that appear on the site and found that they were indeed real, though not original: This one (http://www.pnmj.org/02122004_internal_contamination.asp) is lifted from the Croatian Medical Journal (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9933897&dopt=Abstract), this one (http://www.pnmj.org/02042004_diabetes_research.asp) from Diabetic-Lifestyle.com (http://www.diabetic-lifestyle.com/articles/nov02_healt_1.htm), and this one (http://www.pnmj.org/03052005_cigarette_tex.asp) from a Wisconsin Medical Society (http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/Feb05/Feb24/0224medcigtax.PDF) press release.

This morning we heard again from blogger Tavares, who had learned independently that it was a hoax. He sent a link to the disclaimer page (http://www.pnmj.org/last.asp):

Yes, this is a FAKE Medical Journal website for a FAKE medical association, complete with a fake voicemail system. . . .

Once again, we've proved that so-called "journalists" at so-called "reputable news agencies" are so-called "F---king lazy." It's not like we didn't drop about two billion clues that this particular article might not be full to the brim with medical fact, you know. In fact, we set up a voicemail system to log calls to the Pacific Northwest Medical Association specifically to track just how many reference and source checks were made by you, the mass media. The integrity part of Journalistic Integrity has been left completely by the wayside, and reporters / writers / disc jockeys / what-have-you are simply scraping sites like Fark.com and BoingBoing.net without so much as a verification call.

Did any reporters fall for this hoax? Not that we've seen. Journalists may be lazy, but then again, so is anybody by comparison with guys who would put so much work into a hoax that ends up fooling a solitary blogger.

[Karim]

I think this is a hoax.

http://opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006490 (last item)
Certainly glad to hear it...

[JeeberD]

Josh got PUNK'D! :p ;)

[Yossarian]

http://www.zug.com/pranks/media/index3.html