A controversial new opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests taking severly obese children out of their homes and placing them in foster care.

Dr. David Ludwig, who co-authored the article, claims he's not blaming parents but protecting children.

State intervention will "support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible," he said.

Ludwig proposes foster care in drastic cases, where surgery might have been the alternative.

But Art Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, believes there's no getting around the parental blame game.

Childhood obesity affects nearly two million kids in the United States and is quickly becoming a problem in Canada as well.

Short of better parental education and medical intervention, however, doctors and health care workers struggle with how to tackle the issue.

What do you think of Dr. Ludwig's suggestion? Should parents lose custody of their children if they let them become extremely obese?

(This survey is not scientific. Results are based on readers' responses.)