So, here's the truth: I am not particularly bothered by the idea that people are researching causes of – let's call it what it is – fatness. After all, there are just as many reasons for people to be fat as there are theories that scientists can think up.

The new hotness in fatness research now is adenovirus-36. Apparently, AD-36 has the power to make you fat. As the virus replicates (in many different kinds of cells), it causes your fat cells to replicate and you wind up fatter, even years later.

What does bother me is the media reporting on this single, untested study. When you have Diane Roberts, a reporter for the BBC, asking if slim people should "shun" – such fabulous biblical word choice, that is – fatties, there's something wrong.

From a scientific perspective, this is little more than an interesting theory – and it isn't even all that credible. I mean, according to the abstract, the subject pool was 502 people who were at a weight-loss clinic (though some reports are saying liposuction). That's far from a random sample group. The scientific rigour seems to be lacking here.

First of all, the CIA reports that, as of July 2008, there are 303,824,640 people in the United States. Those people live at every socio-economic level and have an astonishing array of lifestyles (despite what you sometimes read online about the American diet) and backgrounds. A study showing that 1.65*10^-4% (if I've done my maths right) of the population is fat because of a virus is … well, it's pretty meaningless.

In fact, for newspapers to run with this study as if it proves something about anything, indicates to me that people are still looking for a reason to hate fat people for our own good. You might be fat because of a virus, you might be fat because of genetics, but, ultimately, if you buy into what the media is reporting, we still need to resign ourselves to a lifetime of hunger because that's the only way to be fit and healthy.

This is where I could go into the standard argument that fat people can indeed be fit and healthy. This is where, ordinarily, I'd start talking about how correlation does not equal causation and how doctor/nurse prejudice does more harm than being fat possibly could.

But, truly, I don't want to frame the argument that way right now – because it doesn't matter if a person is unhealthy by whatever medical standards the mainstream is using these days. There is no moral obligation to be healthy. There is no moral compunction to be in perfect shape at every point in your life – at any point in your life.

And, frankly, even if this study does turn out to be repeatable (the essence of good science) on a much larger scale, so what? This virus presents as the common cold and most people, claim the researchers, catch it as children. In fact, it also presents lower serum lipids! For those not in the lipid loop, that means lower cholesterol, which is a good thing.

So, are you going to start shunning children? Fat kids are already special targets for revulsion and concern trolling; are you going to saddle them now with the fear that they might catch fat? At least with lice you can tell your kids not to share hats or hairbrushes.

It's OK, thin people. You might become fat for any number of reasons but you can't catch it by sharing a bus ride with me, or by passing me in the hall. Now if only enough of us could tell Diane Roberts that …