Heavy duty

I AM not surprised that Dr John Cameron is an admirer of Allan Massie’s arguments on obesity (Letters, 13 June), since his own arguments leave me puzzled.

Nowhere did I argue that cost should not be considered in addressing the expenditure by states on health – but the 17 per cent of GDP figure for the US indicates mainly that it has an insurance-based private system, with a large proportion of the population uninsured. America also has the biggest problem with obesity.

In Dr Cameron’s world, an obese population is a better population, because the fatter you are, the more diseases you contract, and you die off sooner – so much more convenient in terms of the proportion of GDP spent. If we get everyone fatter, our health costs go down.

There has got to be something wrong with that kind of ­
thinking. 

Crawford Mackie

Loughborough Road

Kirkcaldy, Fife