Meet the UCLA medical school 'fat pride' staffer whose compulsory lectures warn ... trends now
UCLA medical school had been condemned by a renowned Harvard doctor for forcing students to take a 'fat-positivity' class.
All first year medical students at UCLA are required to read an essay by Marquisele Mercedes, a self-proclaimed 'fat liberationist' who claims that 'fatphobia is medicine's status quo' and that weight loss is a 'hopeless endeavor.'
Mercedes's article, titled 'No Health, No Care: The Big Fat Loophole in the Hippocratic Oath,' is on the required reading list for the mandatory Structural Racism and Health Equity course.
The class syllabus, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, shows what students at the elite medical school are learning - which has attracted attention from experts nationwide who disagree with the teachings of the course.
Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world's foremost experts on obesity, slammed the course and said the curriculum 'promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation.'
All first year medical students at UCLA are required to read an essay by Marquisele Mercedes (pictured), a self-proclaimed 'fat liberationist' who claims that 'fatphobia is medicine's status quo' and that weight loss is a 'hopeless endeavor'
Jeffrey Flier(pictured), the former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world's foremost experts on obesity, slammed the course and said the curriculum 'promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation'
UCLA 'has centered this required course on a socialist/Marxist ideology that is totally inappropriate,' said Flier. 'As a longstanding medical educator, I found this course truly shocking.'
The essay by Mercedes details how weight has come to be 'pathologized and medicalized in racialized terms.'
She offers guidance on 'resisting entrenched fat oppression,' according to the course syllabus.
Mercedes claims that 'ob*sity' is a slur 'used to exact violence on fat people' - particularly 'Black, disabled, trans, poor fat people.'
'This is a profoundly misguided view of obesity, a complex medical disorder with major adverse health consequences for all racial and ethnic groups,' Flier said - adding that teaching these 'ignorant' ideas to medical students is 'malpractice'.
She uses her social media account to voice more of her 'fat-positivity' activism.
'It's so f***ing isolating to be a disabled Black fat person working towards individual and collective liberation,' she wrote in an Instagram post - adding that being fat is a disability.
Mercedes has also led presentations on how does 'anti-fatness show up in the work you do' - which she says includes using 'fear-mongering language in order to encourage healthy eating and physical activity'
Mercedes also taught students in a public health seminar that 'fat people are forced to contend with anti-fatness every day in every domain across the lifespan'
Mercedes says that 'making the decision to engage with healthcare for fat people often
