When will people learn?

Just the other day this past week, I was hanging out with a couple of friends and we were watching a Ricky Gervais stand-up. I really enjoy his movies, but hadn't seen his stand up, and when he went off on this series of jokes (above video), I was very annoyed. Some of the rest of the stand-up is funny, but it just floors me when people spout off vitriol about any group of people, especially when they don't know ANYTHING about the topic. He's not a scientist. He's not a nutritionist. He's not a fitness expert. And moreover, he's not taking evidence from any of those fields into account in formulating his own opinion.


I've been reading Patricia Churchland's Brain-wise (2001), and I have to say that I love that Churchland addressed the issue of obesity being explained by leptin receptor malfunctioning. The explanation is this: Leptin, a hormone released by fat cells, basically controls feelings of hunger and the sating of it. But leptin receptors can be mutated, and we can predict how overweight a subject will be based on the kinds of mutation of the leptin receptors (shown in mice studies). Churchland states, "If a person is born with the db mutation of the leptin-receptor gene, and if, in consequence, he feels as ravenous at the end of dinner as at the beginning, it seems inevitable that he will overeat. More precisely, it seems reasonable to assume that such a person will have less control over his eating behavior than a person with the standard version of the leptin receptor" (218). In other words, at least SOME cases of obesity will be explained by leptin receptor mutations. Does this explain all cases of obesity? Probably not. But rather than jump on people for having lack of will-power, we should instead find out if it really is the case that they lack "will-power" (and what the hell does that even mean?) before publicly ridiculing them. If we educate ourselves and seek to understand others, then we might actually be able to do some good in the world and help others. It might not seem as satisfying at first as cracking a joke at their expense, but I'm sure we can all pull through that hardship together. Bullying needs to stop, among adults (seriously, we have to hear this crap from ADULTS?) and children.

I actually didn't know the details of obesity before reading that, but still I find it frustrating that people seem never to learn that mocking groups of people based on some specific feature is just wrong, and science always shows it to be ignorant and intolerant in the end.

End rant. QED.