the most insulting thing you can call a person is Fat

Big big mistake! That is all we have to say about the recent trouble that an orthopedic surgeon John D. Kelly found himself in after writing what he thought were some humorous observations about overweight people in a monthly medical trade magazine called Outpatient Surgery Magazine. John Kelly from the University of Pennsylvania claims that he meant for the written comments to be lighthearted humour but instead he has ended up offending hundreds of people and is now facing a backlash of recrimination.

His jokes which were pretty dull anyway with things like -watch out if your patient wears his watch on his finger- and - be careful if there is a comma in the body weight of the patient- were hardly the sort of things that a professional surgeons from the University of Pennsylvania should have been writing about. John Kelly is now being subjected to hundreds of emails which he said he is replying to with heartfelt remorse and extreme expressions of apology.

What this whole incident has highlighted is the sensitivity that overweight people have about their weight problems and how dangerous it is to make light or joke about them. At Ukmedix News we have argued that possibly the most insulting thing you can call a person is Fat and that Fat is in fact the New F-Word.

John Kelly said that he now fully understood that jokes which were made in comedy clubs were not the same sort of jokes that you could make in a serious medical journal. He said that he would now have much more respect for the potential offence that some jokes could cause.

Many low calibre comedians actually pick on fat people as an easy target for cheap humour. It is easy to make people laugh highlighting the problems that obese people face but in fact it is a pretty cruel way to get a laugh and while overweight people may put on a brave face they are in fact deeply offended inside.