Leading Doctor Recommends Obese Children Be Taken From Their Parents
A doctor has proposed putting severely obese children in temporary foster homes.
Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children's Hospital Boston, made this recommendation Wednesday in highly respected 'Journal of the American Medical Association.'
In the opinion piece, Ludwig wrote about a 12-year old girl who weighed 400 pounds, and was placed in a foster home because she had developed diabetes, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure and sleep apnea.
After a year in foster care, and three square meals a day, the girl lost 130 pounds and her health greatly improved.
This type of state intervention is rare, at this point. But since health care officials are already required to report when children are severely underweight, it probably won't require any legal changes to make the flagging of super obese children standard procedure, too.
What do you think? If a child's obesity poses a severe threat to their health does the state have the right to take that child from their parents?
[Yahoo!]