Editorial: Is Europe right on obesity as disability?

If you surrender to obesity it is your own physical choice. Photo / Thinkstock

I am fascinated by a European Court's ruling that obesity is a disability.

It is difficult to know whether to condemn it as an excellent example of the law being an ass, or as an evolution of our culture where we must now accept that obesity is an unpreventable facet of the Western world, which a civilised society must cater for.

The concept of a disability is different from an illness or a disease.

An illness is managed, usually privately. With a disability, we use our ingenuity to construct visible mechanisms and environments to assist those who are disabled.

Since we cannot regrow limbs, or cure blindness, or repair spinal cords, we find increasingly clever ways to provide disabled persons with the means to participate and contribute.

By that principle, this European ruling potentially means, in politically correct societies, that we must construct environments and adapt work practices to ensure obese people can still participate in their jobs and their lives.

I don't for a minute believe such a ruling would reach its way to New Zealand in the short term; we don't have the culture or mindset to accept it. People are, generally, pretty cruel towards obese persons at the best of times, and the concept an obese person is entitled to special treatment and funding would provoke a backlash of resentment.

In the European ruling, it was a truck driver who used the law to swing an employment issue his way, and I guess that's his victory. Clever arguments and logic can overcome common sense. But do obese people really want to be considered disabled? Is that a label that feels more comfortable to wear? I have heard obese people say nothing works, that they have no control over their situation. If it was true that an obese person can no more lose weight than a man can regrow a leg, then it would be a disability.

But medically we know a person's weight can be controlled, managed and reduced. A disability is the permanent and irreversible reduction of biological action and ability in comparison to the rest of your species. Obesity may be extremely difficult to resolve. You may surrender to it. But that is your physical choice.

That is the one thing the disabled do not have.