A British man who once tipped the scales at nearly 1,000 pounds is suing Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), claiming that they failed to heed his cries for help as far back as 1996.
Paul Mason, who at one time held the title of world’s fattest man, says he began eating 24 hours a day after an unexpected breakup in his mid-20s. By 1996, he had reached 420 pounds, and begged the NHS for help. An agency doctor advised him to “ride your bike more.”
In the decade that followed, his weight climbed to over 900 pounds, until he finally opted for life-saving gastric bypass surgery last year. He has since slimmed down to a more manageable 500 pounds.
Mason’s beef with the NHS is that they didn’t identify his problem as a clinical eating disorder; instead, they merely told him that he needed to exercise and lose weight.
Trying to help others
Mason, 50, says his suit is intended to spur the agency to help others similarly situated -- before it is too late.
“I want to set a precedent so no one else has to get to the same size -- and to put something back into society,” Mason told The Sun recently.
Mason says that, at his heaviest, he was eating 20,000 calories per day -- almost ten times the recommended amount for a man his age. His health care costs over the last 15 years are estimated at around 1 million pounds -- that’s $1.5 million, or around $2,000 per week. According to The New York Daily News, that figure doesn’t include his $50,000 gastric bypass surgery or the cost of firefighters breaking down his door to get him out for hernia surgery.
Before his surgery in 2009, the floor of St. Richard’s Hospital, located in Chichester, West Sussex, had to be reinforced -- a task that cost $7,500.
Mason’s suit may seem like an anomaly, or even a borderline joke, but it’s also the next logical step for consumers who blame McDonald’s for their weight gain. And with the expanding rate of obesity in America -- the latest Center for Disease Control (CDC) figures say that 34 percent of Americans are overweight, and 34 percent obese -- it’s not likely to be too long before consumers begin suing their health care providers on the grounds that they wrongly diagnosed or treated their condition.
Bragging rights?
Indeed, at least one American is proudly touting her morbid obesity -- and hoping to one day set a fat-breaking record. Donna Simpson, of New Jersey, currently weighs 650 pounds, but she is aiming to become the fattest woman in the world. On Christmas Day, she made strides toward that goal by downing a 30,000-calorie dinner, complete with two turkeys, two hams, 15 pounds of potatoes, and six pints of gravy.
How long before she files suit?
