A project headed by Bradley University’s Women’s Studies program warns that losing weight could be “dangerous.”

“There are two commonly held assumptions about fat,” the Bradley University site claims. “One is that it is unhealthy to be heavy. The other is that if they tried, heavy people could lose weight.” The site also contains an entire section on “fatism,” or the supposed discrimination against overweight individuals.

The site is a project of Bradley’s Women’s Studies department and is designed to combat discrimination against overweight individuals in the United States.

“Today in the U.S., millions of people who are larger than average will encounter significant discrimination, suffer unfair treatment and humiliation, and be denied equal opportunities in all areas of life,” the site claims. “Weight discrimination, sometimes called ‘fatism’, is a serious problem with devastating consequences both for the individuals who are discriminated against and for society as a whole.”

“Heavy patients are commonly advised to lose weight regardless of their state of health. And while a thin person is given medication or other appropriate treatments, a heavy person with the same symptoms may simply be told to lose weight,” the site claims.

Medical science has long established that obesity leads to a myriad of health complications and increased risk factors. Obese individuals are at a higher risk for health issues such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and cancer than are individuals with a normal weight. According to research, there are many medications that simply don’t work on obese individuals, including antibiotics, fertility drugs, and birth-control pills.

Despite the seemingly obvious health risks associated with obesity, academics in the Women’s Studies department at Bradley insist that dieting can be “dangerous” to human health.

“Even though the U.S. Department of Health and the World Health Organization agree that dieting and weight lose surgery can be dangerous to human health, patients healthfulness continues to be determined by their body mass index regardless of the lack of scientific evidence supporting its use,” the site claims. While some extreme forms of dieting can be harmful, medical research states that even moderate exercising and dieting can help to shed pounds and decrease risk levels for health issues.