[C-U Smokefree] Tobacco Still No. 1 cause of preventable deaths, NOT Obesity

[Theotskl at aol.com]

FYI.

Tobacco contnues to be the number one cause of preventable deaths in the US, 
NOT obesity. Earlier CDC study that declared obesity as the number one cause 
of preventable deaths in the US was and still remains flawed.

Entire piece from the Washington Post is pasted below.

Dr. Theo Tsoukalas
theotskl at aol.com

THE WASHINGTON POST 
November 23, 2004
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8902-2004Nov23.html
Accessed online: November 24, 2004

TITLE:
CDC Study Overestimated Deaths From Obesity

By Rob Stein

  Federal health officials  said yesterday they had overestimated in a 
high-profile study the number of Americans dying from being overweight. 

  Officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 
they will  submit a correction to the Journal of the American Medical 
Association, which published the paper March 10, to set the record straight.

  In the hope of producing more accurate estimates in the future, the agency 
is reviewing the methods it uses to calculate the health effects of being 
overweight. 

Officials stressed, however, that the error did not change the fundamental 
conclusion that the increasing number of Americans who are overweight is a major 
and increasingly common public health problem.

"I want to make it clear that we really regret this error, and we really 
regret any confusion it has caused about the importance of obesity," said Dixie E. 
Snider, the CDC's chief scientist. "But obesity is still going to be a major 
public health problem and a major contributor to death." 

Skeptics of the obesity epidemic, however, seized on the admission as 
evidence that concerns about obesity have been overblown.

"Their admission . . . is a good start. A full investigation into the obesity 
death tally will reveal multiple flaws that seriously overstate the obesity 
problem and is leading to knee-jerk policymaking and litigation," said Dan 
Mindus, an analyst for the Center for Consumer Freedom, which is funded in part by 
the restaurant industry.

In the March paper, the CDC calculated that poor diet and physical inactivity 
caused 400,000 deaths in 2000, up from 300,000 a decade earlier, making it 
the second leading cause of preventable death behind cigarette smoking. If 
current trends continued, obesity would overtake smoking and become the leading 
cause of preventable death by next year, with the toll surpassing 500,000 deaths 
annually, the CDC estimated.

But after the study was criticized as flawed, the agency determined that the 
estimate was too high because the researchers inadvertently failed to properly 
apply a statistical correction factor to the data used in the study. 

Snider would not specify how much the estimate was inflated, saying the 
agency was still finalizing what it  plans to submit to the medical journal and 
that the final number could change once the submission is reviewed by independent 
scientists.

But Snider confirmed an account in  the Wall Street Journal, which first 
reported the error yesterday, that one analysis concluded that errors may have 
inflated the study's death toll by about 80,000 deaths, or 20 percent. 

Regardless of the final number, Snider said being overweight would still be 
the second leading cause of preventable death behind tobacco.

"Tobacco and obesity are still the two major risk factors for death in this 
country, and that won't change," Snider said.

Beyond the correction, the agency had also asked the Institute of Medicine, 
which is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, to bring together experts 
from around the country next month to try to develop a better way to determine 
the health effects of being overweight.

That move was welcomed by critics, who have been saying that the impact of 
obesity has been exaggerated.

"I wouldn't say obesity isn't a problem, but it's nowhere near the numbers 
they have been throwing around," said Glenn A. Gaesser, a University of Virginia 
physiologist who wrote "Big Fat Lies," which questions many of the assertions 
about obesity.

Many of the health problems blamed on being overweight are actually the 
result of  people eating poorly and failing to exercise, Gaesser said.

"Most of the health problems associated with body fat are really caused by 
lifestyle," Gaesser said.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/cu-smokefree/attachments/20041124/4786a59e/attachment.htm