Monday 19 December 2011

Champix for chubbies.

The inevitable reasoning behind the demonisation of those who have, shall we say, a little more gravitational influence than average, is now here. There is a miraculous wonder drug that will make you lose weight.

These drugs don't just pop put of the air. They have to be developed, tested, refined, retested, and go through approval procedures. It takes years. In fact, it is entirely possible that the first indications of success in the life of this kind of drug would have been, oh, let's see, around the time the fatties had their first invitations to Denormalised Club.

Denormalise you, ostracise you, push you out of society and then sell you medication so you can get back in. A familiar pattern and one which we will all experience eventually. Well, those who think society is currently worth getting back into will experience it.

Currently there are drugs that interfere with fat absorption but this means that the fat continues in its natural runny form all the way down the gut and emerges as wet slime. Not pleasant, as you can imagine. It can also lead to lower-gut problems as things that should never reach the colon are fermented by hungry bacteria. A combination of acid, gas and runny stuff is not going to brighten anyone's day.

The new one works differently. It works rather like Champix...

‘I think we could mimic the dramatic weight loss achieved with stomach bypass surgery by giving people gut hormone-derived therapies. If you could take away hunger, food is not attractive.’ 

Yes, it removes the enjoyment part of eating. With this hormone coursing through you, you will not find food attractive and will eat far less of it. That makes perfect sense to the clinical scientific mind.

As did the Champix notion that removing the pleasure associated with smoking means people won't bother doing it any more. That made perfect scientific sense too, in a Mr. Spock world of pure logic.

However, people need some form of pleasure and what makes one person happy does not make another happy. I like to smoke and drink. Some people don't like those things at all. Some people find a long drive in the country relaxing. It used to leave me a nervous wreck when I did it. Some people find food a particular pleasure.

Take away a person's primary source of pleasure, whatever it is, and what are you left with? A miserable git who, sometimes, decides that life is no longer worth living. That part is never factored in to any scientific calculation because science has no means of measuring it. I don't think it has ever really tried.

It's worse than just taking away a pleasure. My enjoyment of smoking is curtailed these days pretty much whenever I leave home. Even so, I know that when I get back home I can fire up the espresso machine or pop the cork on the whisky and light up a smoke. These drugs are different.

They take away your ability to find pleasure in something that was pleasurable. It's still there. You can still eat. You just won't enjoy it any more. No matter what is on your plate, the pleasure you once took from it is impossible to feel. This is not a ban on food. It is not applied to particular foods or particular places. It's a ban that applies inside your head, a hormonally-induced ban on pleasure. The Puritan dream made reality.

If you like beer, imagine being at the greatest beer festival the world has ever seen where all your favourites and more are freely available. However, you have taken one of these mind-meddling hormones and no matter which beer you try, you cannot enjoy it. It tastes the same, smells, looks and feels the same, is at the perfect temperature and the perfect degree of carbonation. It evokes no feelings of pleasure in you at all.

This is a horror story I couldn't write. It is a depth of despair I cannot imagine.It is a situation that makes suicide inevitable.

Worse, you will find those who will take pleasure in the death of someone just because they disapprove of their lifestyle. They will crow and cheer the suicidal chubbies as they now do with smokers. This is how they get their kicks. This is where they derive pleasure.

Those are the minds those scientists need to treat. They never will, because those are the minds of the Righteous.

20 comments:

pat nurse said...

i can say that smoking is my one , my all,my everything.

Leg-iron said...

Ah, it's pseudopat once more. Still pursuing your ridiculous vendetta and nicely timed.

There was nobody on the site but we two when you posted that.

Sue said...

I find having a rollup kills my appetite... who needs diet pills when you can have a Golden Virginia rolly :)

westcoast2 said...

This is a horror story I couldn't write. It is a depth of despair I cannot imagine.It is a situation that makes suicide inevitable.
This reminded me that Michael Moorcock did write about this. In "The Shores of Death" (aka "The Twilight Man") he describes a 'Mr Take' who is immortal. His immortaly, sought by others, comes with a heavy price - feeling (touch and emotion). Unfortunately, even worse for Mr Take, suicide is not an option and his despair apparent. He does try and warn others who seek and the fate that awaits them. This state came about (if I recall correctly) as a search to benefit humanity. This is not the main theme of the novel though.

Haven't read this book in years so may have to re-read sometime.

Anonymous said...

Champix nearly killed me.

talwin said...

Thing is, if it becomes available, chubbies will take this tablet. Of course they will. And, as with all the other fat-fighters stuff, will give up after a week or so.

Anonymous said...

Chubbies will take this tablet. Eventually the poorer among them will be threatened with having their benefits stopped and their children taken away.

Anonymous said...

"Those are the minds those scientists need to treat...
They never will, because those are the minds of the Righteous."

Unfortunatley, those are the minds of most of the scientists as well.

Angry Exile said...

If you could take away hunger, food is not attractive.

What irredeemable shite. If there was any truth in that we'd all be perfectly happy to shovel each and every meal into a blender and drink the resulting meat, two veg, applie pie and ice cream smoothie without really giving a stuff what it tastes like all mixed up like that. For that matter if food was nothing more than fuel and eating was just an exercise in dealing with hunger everyone would just eat the the cheapest food there is and there'd be no market for expensive restaurants that pay lots of money for arty food photos for their menus. What a joyless bastard this Prof Bloom must be to believe that food has no attraction if hunger's not involved.

Anonymous said...

I have a horrible creeping suspicion that this is exactly how most of the bansturbators actually already view the world.

No pleasure, no enjoyment, no happiness except in formulating and implementing new and more draconian bans (even the puritans used to have pleasures, even if they pretended they didn't and the Vulcans did occasionally have a good punch-up). So this drug is for nothing more than to make the rest of us just like them.

Live long and prosper.

Lord T said...

I think we need to find these labs burn them to the ground and execute everyone there. It won't be long before the fuckers in charge will want this added to the water. Like flouride. Change our brain chemistry to fit in with their agendas.

animaloutrage said...

spot on lord T, been there and done that, its the only time they listen

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX no matter which beer you try, you cannot enjoy it. It tastes the same, smells, looks and feels the same, is at the perfect temperature and the perfect degree of carbonation. It evokes no feelings of pleasure in you at all. XX

Aha! You have been to Wetherspoons then.

Frank Davis said...

It's insane. I saw the same story in the Express, and couldn't help but think that, if people stop eating, they die of starvation. But presumably, they won't notice that they're starving.

"Researchers believe the pill will stop obese people from feeling hungry .."

I can only suppose that they now want to kill off the chubbies.

P.S. Leggie, I've been coming under the same spoofing attack as you now seem to be, and have made my comments open only to registered Wordpress members. I don't know whether Blogger offers a similar facility.

Anonymous said...

Getting commentators to only be registered users of this, that and other blogsites, or members of FB or the like may be what the fake-commentator wanted to create all along, if he's working in cahoots with authorities to try dampening the sheer number of comments against smoking-bans online and whittling it down to just a few registered handfuls who might then remain more isolated from the rest of the internet, being as only registered persons will be able to post.

Frank Davis said...

I agree with anonymous above that it'll reduce the number of comments. But the alternative is the sort of chaos I was experiencing today with Junican (the real one) denying that he was the Junican (a fake one) who'd posted earlier.

Anyway, it's not necessarily a permanent measure. I can always go back to the original open format.

Leg-iron said...

Blogger does allow me to restrict comments, but I won't. I haven't had a proper troll in ages and they're fun to play with. The resident babbler isn't a proper troll. He's just nuts. I know what goads him and it's not smoking.

I suspect the Pseudopat troll is a sign of the increasing desperation of the antismokers, as they see their grip on control slipping and the whole sorry edifice cracking around them.

They are down to sad little personal attacks and comical impersonations. None of which will affect me in the slightest. If the silly little man wants to offer illegal tobacco sales, it doesn't matter whose name he uses. His IP is what the revenue men will use to track him, not his screen name.

I haven't had a good troll to play with in a long time so I won't ban him. Let's see what he can do.

Dance for us, troll.

Anonymous said...

And if there is no longer any pleasure in eating guess what it will be replaced with. A pill or juice, or candy bar(marketed by Big Pharma of course) to supply us with the nutrients we need to keep us alive and productive. Hassle-free, less costly, and much quicker than cooking or going out to eat. Bet some people would find that fantastic. It will go along well with the alcohol substitute David Nutt is developping! Thank goodness I have more years behind me than ahead of me :-(

Iro

Anonymous said...

See - Fritz Ter Meer + food - and give yourself a nasty scare.

The Health Freedom people have been on to this for years.

Rose

Animal Outrage said...

The trouble with fritz ter meer is that he supports killing whales in japan so i have no time for him

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