"An advisory committee to the FDA will consider on Friday a request by a pharmaceutical company, to significantly lower how obese someone must be to qualify for surgery using the company’s Lap-Band device, which restricts intake to the stomach.
... still leaves some people uneasy, in part because of side effects and failure rates. In addition, long-term weight reduction is hard to maintain.
“You’re talking about millions and millions of people who would meet these criteria,” said Dr. George Blackburn, associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School. “Let’s make sure by the most rigorous research that this is safe and effective.”
“It would be kind of ironic if people have access to surgery and not medical therapies, where they can go from Weight Watchers to surgery and have nothing in-between,” said Dr. Louis J. Aronne, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medical College."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/02/business/02obese.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=a25&adxnnlx=1291295148-RvWZEvjiccKgSP3FbEl/5A
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