This is Dr. Cat Pausé.
42 years old.
Senior lecturer in so-called "fat studies" at Massey University.
Fat activist.
Host of a "fat-positive" radio programme.
Through her work and beyond it, she argued publicly that the science behind the link between obesity and chronic disease was not clear-cut.
That fat people, even the severely obese, could have health as good as or better than people of normal weight.
That the real problem was the stigma, not the size itself.
That medical concern about obesity pathologised bodies instead of protecting them.
She died in her sleep, 42 years old.
The cause of death has never been made public.
Only described as "medical causes".
The field she had helped build had already settled the premise beforehand.
The body is fine at any size.
Health is secondary to acceptance.
....
I will not interfere in how people choose to look.
Nor in how much science they choose to dismiss along the way.
People are welcome to think they can be perfectly fine without letting a deadly level of obesity bother them. It is their own body and their own life. And all human beings - the undersigned included - live to a greater or lesser degree in delusions about how reality is arranged.
But it would be nice if the medical world - the universities, the hospitals, the practitioners and the pharmaceutical companies - held back from signing off on the premise. And pushed back gently against this sort of thing without apologising for it.
It is not stigma to say that something kills.
It is really just saying it.
And it can and must be done out of Love for Man.
We are not made to live in inversion.
