Britain's fattest man to sue NHS over lardyness

[TooNice]

He isn't suing them, he might try to though. Sounds like two completely different things to me.

I missed that (made my last post in a hurry). To be honest, I care about as much about people who eat themselves humongous as I do about people who smoke their lungs black, or drink so much they need to get their stomach pumped. I think it's bad, but I can overlook it. What is unacceptable however is, as already said, suing the very institution that probably saved his life (and many others). If he isn't doing that, then it's a non-story to me.

[matty-hodgson]

I just see this as being the same as any other illness. This is just a mental illness that needs to be treated as such.

If someone told me that I have to start to control my illness before the NHS would give me any help, I wouldn't be at all happy.

It'd be just as hard for me to control being bipolar on my own as it would for this man to begin losing weight. What exactly can this man do to try and lose weight? The most exhausting thing this man could do is play an xbox or something.

But if he does try to sue the NHS for him being fat, then that is TOTALLY out of order! And IMO, he should have all treatment stopped if he tries to sue them. Why should tax payers pay for this man to eat 20,000 calories a day, AND THEN give him money to compensate him for his eating?!

[Lucio]

I don't think he should be allowed to sue the NHS because it sets a dangerous precident in that it becomes the government's responsibilty to stop us doing stupid things, and if that were to happen could you imagine the fuss the extra laws would cause? It is not and should not become the governments responsibilty to stop us from harming ourselves

[sadbuttrue]

Does he have a job or savings? I question how one could afford 20,000 calories per day on unemployment benefit. I'm guessing he receives a disability allowance. Another example of why this benefit should not be cash based imo.

[kalniel]

Does he have a job or savings? I question how one could afford 20,000 calories per day on unemployment benefit. I'm guessing he receives a disability allowance. Another example of why this benefit should not be cash based imo.

Calorific food is usually cheaper than less calorific food, in our country at least.

[No.72]

I watched a few short clips of a documentary on this waste of a man, he blamed everyone but himself. It is so typical of the victim industry, these day’s anyone who is suffering from some disability or if they are non-white or a women or a homosexual they claim discrimination. In most cases these people have invented their victim status so they can get money and attention.

Personally in his case I don’t think he should have any medical help because he has ruined his own body through greed, not by anyone else. Also I may add I lean to the libertarian side of things on health care, people should pay their way unless they are in desperate situation that is no fault of their own.

[Saracen]

I don't think he should be allowed to sue the NHS because it sets a dangerous precident in that it becomes the government's responsibilty to stop us doing stupid things, and if that were to happen could you imagine the fuss the extra laws would cause? It is not and should not become the governments responsibilty to stop us from harming ourselves

No, the principle is that is someone presents to a doctor or hospital with a problem, they're given competent treatment and advice. And, as that's their job, they should be doing it competently. And if they don't, then there ought to be a comeback, especially if the patient could be (and, perhaps in this case, actually was) seriously harmed or killed by a lack of competence.

If we use "you harmed yourself" as the standard for either getting treatment, or it being competent, where do we draw the line?

For a start, how overweight do you need to be to not deserve competent medical advice? And how do you determine if the medical issue is related to whatever you did to yourself? Any smoker stands a decent chance of having contributed to lung cancer, and for that matter, to heart disease and a number of other issues, but it's not 100% cut and dried. So do we not treat smokers?

What about someone that falls off their motorbike? Do we not treat them if they were riding like an utter loon, and lost it? What about if they were 10mph over the posted speed limit?

What about sports injuries? If you don't want to risk potentially serious injuries, don't play rugby or football, don't tide a bike or a horse, don't .... well, the list is nearly endless. I suppose you might even get an eye injury that you did to yourself from an errant tiddlywink.

Clearly, I've taken it to one extreme, and this case is at the other extreme. His degree of obesity, however it came about (medical issue or just self-abuse) is overtly right at the other end. BUt that's the point - it's not black and white, it's a continuous scale of grey. Just where on that scale have you harmed yourself enough to not be entitled to competent medical treatment, or even treatment at all?

And who decides?

To my mind, a principle is a principle, and the principle is that medical advice and treatment should be competent. That's not to say every medical condition should be treated. Deciding that we don't do something, or don't do it except in certain conditions is fair enough, and a value judgement for society to make.

Examples would be cosmetic surgery, and infertility treatment. In the latter, as I understand it, if you qualify, you get a certain number of rounds under the NHS, and after that, you pay for more. For cosmetic surgery, I'd argue that reconstruction after accident, burn injuries, or sadly more recently, combat injuries, are absolutely justified. A nose job because you don't like the shape, or boob implants, are another thing entirely and shouldn't be available on the NHS short of compelling evidence that it is causing serious psychological harm.

So ... saying we won't provide a specific treatment, or that there are conditions, is one thing, and fair enough. But whatever the treatment or need for medical advice is, if we as a society provide it at all, it ought to be provided competently.

The argument is a standard negligence issue. Negligence arises, basically, where :-

- a duty of care exists, and
- that duty is breached, and
- resulting damage occurs.

Here, does the duty of care exist? If it doesn't, we shouldn't be providing treatment in the first place. If it does, then by definition, it is a duty of care, and needs to be provided competently. If it was, no breach exists and no negligence results. If it wasn't, then did damage result?

[Tumble]

Britain's lardiest bloke to sue NHS
Does the guy have a point, or, like me, soupy think he's taking the biscuit

Off topic, but Damn you, autocorrect??

[Iron Sights]

If only he just ate his greens..........

[petercook7]

The issue here is he went for help they refused and now he is like this, he took onboard specialist advice or thought he did and it was wrong, the doctor should be the one thats sued.
Most doctors these days dont really care about patient, just like dentists all they care about is numbers and how much they can extract from the tax payer. Iam pro stem cell research partially for these reasons among others, it could help fix these mess that we are in. Doctors these days work less than the doctors pre 1990, when they would take turns doing night shifts. Doctors should be forced to pay for their own insurance rather than the NHS, they hide behind the NHS . The NHS should provide the tools for the doctors and be less of a centralised institution.

Its the same issue i have with universities in this country if they want to up the fees then they should provide a proper level of teaching, the whole university is based around lecturers publishing their papers, they have no time for students.

[MaddAussie]

Off topic, but Damn you, autocorrect??

Off topic: Cheers I'm laughing like a drain at that site

[BobF64]

Indeed. Do we know how he is obtaining his food.? Though, it can be easy to oversimplify that angle (controlling his food source) - it reminds me of documentaries where even in obesity clinics patients are getting hold of junk food.

Its probably due to natural supply, its what he likes to eat, so people give it to him.

Perhaps if they gave him appetite suppressants instead, it would work better.

I think he could survive for years without eating.

[santa claus]

I've got a couple of thoughts on that. First, while he may very well have been suffering genuine emotional stress, he gets no brownie points from me for it being public, since that has to have been his decision. If he didn't want it public, don't make a documentary. Clearly, he has his reasons for doing so. It may well be that those reasons centre around publicity for the problem and for others with issues, and are entirely selfless, but nonetheless, it's got to have been his decision to go public with it.

Good post Saracen. I'm only going by what was presented, but it seemed that introspection was responsible for at least some of the tears. Whilst he may have prepared himself for going public, as can often be the case in life, it's the unexpected that hurts most and talking about his predicament seemed to be opening doors in the man.

[Biscuit]

I'm with Saracen on this one, although i think the point about him going to the media needs to be stressed.
The NHS, along with pretty much everything in this country at the moment, is struggling to keep standards above average. Individuals will occasionally suffer due to this. If this is one of those cases or not is besides the point, bringing bad press and possibly creating some kind of public interest court case is hardly helping matters.
If, as Saracen pointed out, this is all due to clinical malpractice, damn straight the guy should try and get some kind of compensation but all this 'will donate towards helping people in a similar situation' non-sense seems a bit counter productive.

[Blitzen]

I'm guessing he receives a disability allowance. Another example of why this benefit should not be cash based imo.

What a stupid, sweeping, ignorant comment!

To class Disability Allowance as a whole only shows your lack of knowledge on anything outside of your own bubble.

My daughter is SEVERELY disabled, and yes she gets a few small allowances. These allow her to do things, that as a 6 year old, i am sure you took for granted.
1. Did you have to have an adapted car so you could go out?
2. Did you parents have to take you to hospitals 4-5 times per month?
3. Could you tell your parents what was wrong with you when you were ill, as you could barely speak?
4. Did you have allergies to many many things around you?
5. Are you joints so badly formed that you cannot walk?

I could list things all day, and i BET the answer is no to all of them.

Try to engage your brain before you spout such rubbish!

(sorry to go off topic, but this poster clearly has 'wedding vegetables' for brains)

[j.col]

Calorific food is usually cheaper than less calorific food, in our country at least.

very true.
imo its his own fault. we all know if you eat fatty food, you get fat