{"id":877170,"date":"2026-10-10T06:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T06:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877170\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T06:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T06:32:14","slug":"harvard-medical-school-takes-on-weight-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/877170\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvard Medical School Takes on Weight Loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few educational institutions are as prestigious as Harvard Medical School. At its best, the school is a bastion of evidence-based medicine and excellence in human health. It\u2019s hard to square that reputation, however, with a recent panel<\/a> hosted by HMS and titled \u201cAgainst the Pathology of Unruly Bodies.\u201d The event encouraged distrust of doctors and cast weight loss\u2014one of the most effective health interventions\u2014as a project of coercion, \u201ceradication,\u201d and fascism. Panelists portrayed<\/a> medical science as biased, overly reliant on empirical data, and unable to account fully for lived experience, racism, profit, and other systems of power.<\/p>\n

Despite a warning<\/a> that the \u201cviews and opinions expressed during this event are those of the panelists and do not necessarily represent the official views of Harvard,\u201d the event calls into question the judgment of one of the nation\u2019s top medical schools, especially because it included a Harvard M.D. candidate and a board-certified patient advocate. The panel raised questions about how seriously Harvard is taking medical education and how extensively far-left ideology has captured the institution.<\/p>\n

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The event was moderated by Roxane Gay, a New York Times columnist, artist-in-residence at Harvard, and cousin of former Harvard president Claudine Gay. It even featured a panelist from the Socialism 2026 conference who went viral for claiming that GLP-1s are contributing<\/a> to a \u201cfat genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alongside Gay were Da\u2019Shaun L. Harrison (who appeared shirtless on the event poster), Ragen Chastain, and Alisha Steigerwald. Their stated intent was to discuss the \u201cintersection of fatness and healthcare,\u201d with a focus on how \u201cfat bodies are pathologized by medical professionals with grave consequences\u201d and, ultimately, how fat people can be treated \u201cmore ethically\u201d rather than as \u201cproblems to be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The talk was cosponsored<\/a> by Harvard\u2019s English Department. Gay and Harrison are known for their writing on the fat experience, among other topics. Chastain<\/a> is a \u201cmulti-certified health and fitness professional\u201d and holds the Guinness World Record<\/a> for \u201cHeaviest person to complete a marathon (female).\u201d Steigerwald<\/a> is a Harvard M.D. candidate and was the only panelist to identify as a formerly fat person, describing the experience of dramatic weight loss as carrying its own \u201cpsychosocial ramifications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison took the panel in a notable direction with his discussion of \u201cbody fascism,\u201d also the subject of his forthcoming book. Harrison considers<\/a> body fascism a bipartisan effort that began in the 1930s and continues today with the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement. He claimed that councils created by Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Michelle Obama were meant \u201cto indoctrinate children into a culture of fitness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steigerwald responded to Harrison by arguing that, while science portrays<\/a> itself as \u201cobjective and scientific,\u201d it fails to account for a patient\u2019s respective \u201csocial and cultural structures.\u201d For Steigerwald, this was personal because, at Harvard, she started<\/a> \u201cobesity treatment\u201d for fear that her body was unsuited to medicine, implying that doctors must be thin. Steigerwald\u2019s weight loss<\/a> was, she said, not a long-imagined \u201cpromised land\u201d but instead a source of \u201cgrief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Panelists challenged the link between weight and other health outcomes. Chastain, for example, argued<\/a> that research linking weight and poor health \u201cscrupulously ignores\u201d factors such as health-care inequality and weight cycling\u2014the repeated loss and regain of weight. She sees these as \u201cbasic problems with the research that tries to blame fatness for ill health.\u201d Gay lamented that Americans no longer believe in science, mocking those who \u201cdo their own research.\u201d She went on to discuss<\/a> how she was receptive to \u201cevidence-based information\u201d from her doctor but would not discuss weight loss and considered her blood work healthy.<\/p>\n

The panel also raised the specter of \u201cfat genocide,\u201d a topic that drew headlines after Harrison\u2019s comments at Socialism 2026. Harrison described<\/a> GLP-1s as a \u201cfascistic tool\u201d designed to \u201ceradicate fatness.\u201d Chastain, meanwhile, characterized<\/a> the pharmaceutical industry\u2019s mindset as, \u201cwe don\u2019t want fat people treated badly, but we absolutely must eradicate them from the earth and make sure no more ever exist.\u201d Harrison warned that governments likely will see refusals<\/a> to take these drugs as not only unpatriotic but \u201cin many ways suicidal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The intersectional nature of the panelists\u2019 activism emerged in a discussion<\/a> of Chastain\u2019s work on \u201cgender-affirming care,\u201d which can evidently<\/a> be denied to patients whose weight makes them an anesthesia risk. Chastain\u2019s tactic for dealing with doctors who redirected fat patients toward weight loss, such as before a major surgery or gender transition, was to ask<\/a>: \u201cDoes this happen to thin people?\u201d and to demand \u201cweight-inclusive care\u201d and the same treatment afforded to thin patients. In her view, \u201cThin people get ethical, evidence-based care and fat people get told to lose weight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others shared this view. Harrison explained<\/a> that a visit to a new cardiologist, who assumed his longstanding heart condition was related to his weight, ended with his telling the doctor, \u201cI will never have an interaction like this with you ever again. And if I do, I will report you to your board.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a panel on how to treat fat patients \u201cmore ethically,\u201d the suggestions were surprisingly thin. They consisted<\/a> of eliminating routine weigh-ins, providing appropriately sized equipment, and focusing less on body size and more on patients\u2019 immediate concerns. Harrison suggested a personal boundary, saying<\/a>, \u201cDo not talk to me about what could happen two years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gay, meantime, has moved<\/a> on to concierge medical care and a doctor who does not question her. She later responded to a question about the insurance industry by saying<\/a>, \u201cFree Luigi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ten years ago, fat theorists were championing health at every size and pushing<\/a> for a more holistic vision of health that included remaining fat. A few years later, they focused on socially constructed beauty norms and labeled concerns about weight as byproducts<\/a> of colonization. Today, they assert that \u201cgenociding\u201d<\/a> of fat people is being perpetrated by an industry that developed a miracle drug to help people lose weight.<\/p>\n

Confounding as all this is, what\u2019s most telling is Harvard\u2019s role in it. The prestigious medical school will evidently continue to play host to those decrying health innovations as oppressive.<\/p>\n

Stu Smith<\/a> is an investigative analyst at City Journal.<\/p>\n

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