Fat women have sick kids

I really don't want this to be true. A research report found that mice who were too fat while pregnant caused something to happen to the fetuses that made them predisposed to inflammation-related disorders, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and heart disease, from birth, even if the offspring weren't fat themselves.

Oh, crap. We don't put enough of an onus on fat women that now we have to tell them they're dooming their children to a life of chronic illness followed by a mindless old age? You tell 'em. I'm not.

I mean, if we could really control our weight, it would be one thing. If it really were just a matter of will power, as skinny people falsely believe. They don't have the urges fat people have, so they think they're easy to ignore. But I've come to believe that your body knows what weight it wants to be, and by god, it's going to be that weight. Oh, not completely, of course. You can't be entirely fatalistic, but there is a huge brain-hormone component to being fat.

But neither can we tell fat women they can't have kids. So I guess we have to try whatever we can try to have fat pregnant women lose weight, however futile it's likely to be, and to be prepared to deal with whatever does happen to the kids.

Down the road, I'm more optimistic. Within 10 years, maybe 5, there will be a pill on the market that makes people lose weight down to an appropriate weight without significant side effects. It will change medicine. And society. And some people will deservedly become very rich.