35 year old Rowan Trezise has been rejected from entering New Zealand when her husband applied for a work visa. He chose to lose weight to get admitted himself. His employer backed skills visa was initially rejected by immigration officials when they discovered his BMI was 42, making him morbidly obese under New Zealand regulations.

Mr Trezise, a submarine cable specialist and a former soldier, said: 'My doctor laughed at me. He said he’d never seen anything more ridiculous in his whole life. Not every overweight person is unhealthy or unfit.'

But Robyn Toomath, a spokesman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic and an endocrinologist, said the BMI limit was valid in the vast majority of people. She said she was opposed to obese people being stigmatised. 'However, the immigration department’s focus is different,' she said. 'It cannot afford to import people into the country who are going to be a significant drain on our health resources.

So what I can gather from this is that discrimination is fine as long as it is justified by preventing possible additional use of public services, regardless of the ACTUAL health of the individual, which can be ascertained fairly easily. I am sick of discrimination being allowed in certain circumstances. Why is it publically thought of as ok to judge someone by their weight but not their race, religion or sex?

The newest health advice from experts is to deny anyone with a BMI of over 35 fertility treatment until they lose weight. Both privately and on the NHS! With about 25% of women in the UK falling into to overweight category is this fair?

'Obesity reduces the chances that a woman will conceive naturally and decreases the possibility that fertility treatment will be successful,' said Mr Tony Rutherford, the chair of the BFS's policy committee.

'It also increases the risk of complications during fertility treatment and pregnancy and endangers the health and welfare of both mother and child.'

The complications listed include the difficulty of providing safe anaesthesia for obese women during procedures, as well as problems with viewing ovaries on an ultrasound scan.

The BFS guidelines have no legal weight, but they are referred to by many professionals working in the field.

The chairman of the National Obesity Forum, Dr Colin Waine, said he found the new guidelines 'troubling'.

'Weight loss may improve the success of treatment, and women should be made aware of that, but to deny treatment outright is discriminatory,' he said.

'We are getting ourselves onto an increasingly slippery slope of rationing on the basis of weight, even when overweight people may benefit immensely from treatment.'