First smokers � now eaters; what next?

To the Editor:

Phew!!! I now enjoy a relatively risk-free life from dying from lung cancer, thanks to the stop-smoking busy bodies who saved me from second-hand smoke. I can’t express enough gratitude for the way they forced otherwise good, hardworking, God-fearing citizens to retire to the middle of a hay field to enjoy the full-tilt flavor of a Merit® Ultra Lights 100®.

Now I have to write a bunch of thank you notes to the Centers for Disease Control for their attempts to save me from second-hand flab!

Even though the science behind the ill effects of second-hand flab is no better than that for second-hand smoke, the CDC is going out of their way to force those same good, hardworking, God-fearing citizens to have to run back and forth from their jobs to the middle of the same hay field to ward off the ill effects from enjoying the full-tilt flavor of a McDonalds® Happy Meal®.

Doctor Julie Gerberding of the CDC, in spite of mathematical errors that made a recent study absolutely worthless, explains that 400,000 of 2.4 million fat people who died in the year 2000 may have caught their condition via second-hand flab.

Second-hand flab is what you risk when you stand behind a fat person while in line at the grocery store. Unhealthy food may get mixed up on the unsanitary food conveyor at the checkout counter. You risk it when sitting next to a fat person at a lunch counter. Shared gravy is a common source of contamination from second-hand flab. “It ought to be against the law!” says Doctor Julie.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who himself is recovering from second-hand flab, sites the mathematically-challenged CDC study when addressing members of Congress and third-grade classrooms.

He urges the Food and Drug Administration more rapidly to approve drugs designed to ward off or prevent second-hand flab and encourages the children to line up for anti-flab vaccinations.

Dixie Snider, who is the Chief of Science of the CDC (the job comes with an Indian headdress much like the one worn by Chief Screaming Eagle in the F-Troop TV Series; which is weird because he was a peace pipe smoker!), admits that the CDC study isn’t worth the paper is written on, but nevertheless knows in her cholesterol-laden heart that the ill effects of second-hand flab can not be overstated.

“Congress must do something about this!” she stresses.

Senator Ted Kennedy, himself a reformed flabber (though he relapses from time to time; heck, who doesn’t?), is not surprisingly proposing a flab tax to put an end to second-hand flab. Of course, this tax will be levied by the pound.

Andrew Palmer
Norwell, Mass.