Last week, I reacted to a new study out of Harvard that recommends taking obese children out of their homes and placing them in Foster Care.
As I wrote then, the study's authors seemed oblivious to the great harm that can be caused to children who are removed from their homes. To the researches, physical health (thinness) clearly trumped emotional well-being.
Some defended the study and the researches. Their defense boiled down to saying this type of action (taking a child from a home) should only be done in the most extreme cases.
Well, I encourage the Harvard researches and their defenders to review one extreme case–that of Anamarie Regino who at 3-years old weighed 130 pounds due to a still-undiagnosed condition (Anamarie's diet remains tightly monitored and she receives regular exercise every day yet she remainds obese). Despite her mother's attention to the matter and her mother's regular conversations and doctors and specialists, a cabal of doctors and social workers deemed her and her husband unfit parents and removed Anamarie from her home. She was sent to foster care and only returned after her parents pursued legal action.
Paul Campos, in his book "The Obesity Myth," describes what happened to the Regino family.
The story of what was done to a child and her parents by an assortment of doctors, social workers, and government bureaucrats is a chilling tale of what can happen when people of modest means and social status find themselves, through no fault of their own, facing the full brunt of the prejudice that fuels the war on fat.