Dr. David Ludwig Believes Obese Children Should Be Taken Away From Parents

Harvard University child obesity expert Dr. David Ludwig thinks so…

Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, shared his divisive idea in an opinion piece that ran in the Journal of the American Medical Association Wednesday: that state intervention can serve in the best interest of extremely obese children, of which there’re about 2 million across the United States. “In severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems,” Ludwig co-wrote with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and researcher at Harvard’s School of Public Health. The topic has quickly generated controversy, and the majority of experts contacted by ABC News disagreed with Ludwig and Murtagh’s ideas.

Dr. David Katz, founder of the Yale Prevention Center, said that there is no evidence that the state would do a better job of feeding children than their parents.

Dr. David Orentlicher, co-director of Hall Center for Law and Health at Indiana University of School Law, also disagreed, saying that based on past instances, child protective service agencies might be far too quick to place overweight children in foster care.

Ludwig said he believes that children should only be removed in the most extreme cases, and that state officials should first offer counseling and education to parents.

“It should only be used as a last resort,” he said. “It’s also no guarantee of success, but when we have a 400-pound child with life threatening complications, there may not be any great choices.”

Thoughts???

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