"Britain's fattest woman raises the weighty question of how we will treat the wilfully ill - I'd rather not pay for Brenda Flanagan-Davies's pillow-plumpers
By Cristina Odone
7:00PM GMT 18 Feb 2012
I spent last Saturday comforting a friend, Sue, whose mother had been taken to Accident and Emergency following a fall. Sue’s mother, a 78-year-old widow, lives on her own outside Oxford. Sue and her family live in London, where she and her husband hold down full-time jobs. She immediately took a week off work, but after that, her mother would have to rely on social services: carers will visit her twice a day to help her wash and dress in the morning; practise walking with her new stick; and make sure she doesn’t slump into depression.
I was happy to know that my taxes were being used for this pensioner’s welfare. The infirmities of age come to us all, and, to use an old-fashioned term, this was a deserving case.
I feel differently about Brenda Flanagan-Davies. Britain’s fattest woman weighs 40 stone. That’s more than my refrigerator, double bed and desk combined. Brenda has reached these gargantuan proportions by chomping her way through nine chocolate bars and three fizzy drinks per day. Now immobile, she needs help to turn in bed, wash, dress and relieve herself.
A team of carers is on hand to do just that. Every day they come and cater for a 43-year-old who for decades has deliberately indulged her cravings for Twix and crisps. Paid for by my taxes, the carers make this obese woman’s existence as pleasant as her 40 stone will allow. They plump her pillows, massage cream into her fleshy folds and cook her meals. I begrudge her the team’s assistance, I’m afraid: in my eyes, she belongs to a growing number of the “undeserving ill”.
The term is adapted from the Poor Law of 1601, which drew a distinction between the “deserving poor” who wished to work but couldn’t find a job, or were too old, ill or young to work; and the “undeserving poor” who were able-bodied but lazy. A “poor rate” was levied to raise money to support the former, but there were no hand-outs for the latter.
Today, millions who are elderly and infirm rely on the equivalent of a “poor rate” for support. Their condition is not the predictable consequence of a foolish choice. As in the case of my friend’s elderly mother, it is part of the natural process, or the debilitating result of an accident or a disease. However, there are millions of others who, having embarked on lifestyles that carry huge risks, look to the state for support in their distress. They are the “undeserving ill”.
If a drug addict were rushed into A&E with a suspected heart attack, I know that the hospital must offer him or her its best treatment, state of the art equipment and illustrious specialists. Our publicly funded hospitals do not turn away patients at death’s door simply because their affliction may have been self-inflicted. The crack-head, the woman with faulty breast implants, the teenager with a tattoo that’s grown gangrenous: when it’s a matter of life and death, the health service does not distinguish between the deserving and undeserving ill.
But what about when the drug addict – or the binge drinker, or the Jordan wannabe – is not actually at death’s door, but simply carrying on with their risky lifestyle? I don’t want to support men and women who make potentially harmful choices – either about what they ingest or what they do to their breasts. I’m happy for my taxes to fund the long list of programmes to help addicts kick their habits; but I don’t want to contribute to a team of carers who make things easy and cosy for the risk-taker. Everyone is free to live unhealthily; but they must live with the consequences too. And not at my expense.
The “undeserving ill” is only in part a question of the rights and wrongs of self-inflicted damage. Rationing is another consideration. Forecasts of this country’s demographics are alarming: thanks to remarkable technological advances, more and more of us are growing older and older. But while the pool of needy elderly is set to grow enormously, there is no similar trend among carers. Health and safety regulations, health authority cuts and gruelling work: the carer’s lot is unenviable, and already in certain areas, demand outstrips supply.
When the ageing population makes the shortage of carers even more acute, the state will have to choose between providing Brenda with her carers, and assisting a septuagenarian widow after an accidental fall. Let Brenda plump her own pillows. "
