Fattygate: Did Huckabee Have Secret Gastric Bypass Surgery?

So apparently back in 2003-2004 Republican presidential candidate Mick Huckabee lost 105 pounds over the course of a year. Huckabee claims he lost the weight “the old fashioned way” through diet and exercise. In the national debate over obesity he got quite a bit of national news coverage and wrote a book called Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.

Here’s a video of then-governor Huckabee encouraging his fellow Arkansans to lose weight. His personal weight loss story starts at the 3:00 mark.

Now a blogger is making an extensive (if sometimes overreaching) case for the weight loss being the result of gastric bypass surgery. From the summary:

We’ve considered a host of clinical factors so as to determine whether each is best explained by bariatric surgery or diet/exercise. The findings are as follows:

• Huckabee’s vague history of diet/exercise doesn’t adequately explain his astonishing result.

• His spokeswoman gives an ambiguous denial.
• Massive and persistent weight loss with bariatric surgery is orders of magnitude more common than with diet/exercise.
• Huckabee’s weight loss record fits the pattern of gastric bypass surgery exactly for rapidity, amount and maintenance, and not at all like that of diet/exercise.
• Huckabee demonstrates changes in physical appearance that appear bariatric both in general and the specific (hair loss and skin changes).
• His particular diet habits are tellingly bariatric.
• Just prior to his rapid weight loss he took an unusual vacation with a furtive itinerary and end date.
• In 2005 he needed an abdominal hernia repair, an expected complication of bariatric surgery, and this was explained to be a Spigelian hernia, a vanishingly rare hernia type that is best explained as an apparent cover story.
• His marathon prowess is not so likely to be an example of exercise inducing weight loss, as it is the expected result of (bariatric) weight loss permitting exercise.
• While running marathons Huckabee is shown carrying that energy supplementation, that is both expected of, and associated with, bariatric marathoners.
• The lack of any identified witnesses to the bariatric surgery/hospitalization is adequately explained by medical privacy ethical standards as well as the rigor of Federal law.

P.S. – Even if the surgery didn’t happen, that video is enough to make me not want Huckabee for president. He thinks that the government should give people incentives to lose weight. There are plenty of self-interest incentives to losing weight. I can’t imagine what else the government could do. Here’s what Fred Thompson had to say on the subject:

“I’m telling you, I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat,” Thompson said to applause when asked if his health care plan included any details on preventative care, a priority for Democratic candidates.

“The fact of the matter is we got an awful lot of knowledge,” said the former Tennessee senator. “Sometimes we don’t have a whole lot of will power, and I don’t know of any government program that’s going to instill that.”

See also:
- Soft on Crime Huckabee Won’t Be Republican Nominee