THE MEANING OF ''HELPING'' IN NEWSPEAK

ObeseWorkers Have Higher Health Care Costs than Smokers, Study Says

And the ''we know what's best for you and our wallet'' movement keeps marching on.

So when will the W.H.O. set the trend for other employers to ban obese people from getting a job like they did with people who smoke? 

It's not that the idea didn't cross certain employers' minds.   Toby Cosgrove, CEO for the Cleveland Clinic, is one of them. If it were up to him, if there weren’t legal issues, he would stop hiring obese people as was reported here. 

This is the same individual  who banned people who test positive for nicotine from employment.  His explanation is that  ''As a healthcare institution devoted to the health and well-being of our patients and employees, it is our responsibility to do something to help those who suffer from this terrible addiction. ''  Obviously Dr. Cosgrove believes that using tobacco or nicotine in any form is terribly addictive but his solution to such a ''terrible addiction'' that doesn't interfere with anything or anyone when it is done outside one's working hours, is to bar such people from employment.   In fact you can be engaging in criminal activities outside your working hours and you can still get a job at the Cleveland Clinic but if you test positive for nicotine you become persona non grata.  

As a pre-requisite to employment, the Cleveland Clinic tests an applicant's body fluids for traces of nicotine and all those testing positive for ''the dreaded substance'' (irrelevant of the source) are barred from employment unless they're ''clean'' for 90 days at which time they can reapply.  Why is this less of an invasion of privacy than installing a camera in one's home to monitor what one does outside his working hours?

The Cleveland Clinic is in direct violation of article 23 of the Declaration of International Human Rights which stipulates that : Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment but in the present anti-smoking hysteria climate who's going to stop Cosgrove and his ilk from engaging in such unethical and immoral discrimination?   

 He pushes his idea of ''helping'' even further by strongly advocating for university campus bans, indoors and outdoors.    

If making ”those who suffer from this terrible addiction” uneducated, unemployable and poor is Cosgrove’s idea of ”helping”, what exactly is his defintion of ”harming”?