American Medical Association Dismisses BMI Metric As ‘Racist’

The American Medical Association (AMA) last week declared that the traditional body mass index (BMI) metric used for determining health factors caused “historical harm” through “racist exclusion.”

In quite a week for the AMA, members also pledged to defend highly-profitable “gender-affirming care” for transgender individuals.

The group, founded in 1847, represents over 270,000 physicians and medical students. The New Yorker reported it spent at least $462 million in lobbying efforts since 1998.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BMI is a person’s weight divided by the square of their height. The resulting number is used to indicate “body fatness,” though the measure itself does not offer a diagnosis or assess the individual’s health.

Now, however, the AMA seeks to change this standard health measurement.

It claimed that BMI does not factor in eating disorders and is “problematic” when used to treat them. And this was just one of the group’s complaints.

The organization’s House of Delegates asserted that the metric is based on studies of “previous generations of non-Hispanic White individuals and [has a] lack of gender and ethnicity considerations.”

The leftist website Quartz said BMI is racist in its origins due to the work of Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet in the 1830s. He reportedly based his work on findings from data on European White males.

The AMA also proclaimed its defense of so-called “gender-affirming care.” On June 12, the House of Delegates passed a resolution to “protect access to evidence-based gender-affirming care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals.”

The organization said it has the responsibility to protect this “care” due to “attacks” by political leaders.

The resolution committed the organization to fighting for the rights of those seeking, assisting in the search, or providing gender-affirming care. Of course, most of those opposed to this “care” are concerned about the rights of children not to be subjected to irreversible mutilative procedures.

The AMA did assert that this “medical intervention” should be limited to “older adolescents and adults.” It said that “major medical organizations” believe that it is important to wait until an individual turns 18 or reaches the age of maturity in their country.

Only then, the AMA said, should they be subjected to “gender-affirming genital surgery.”