By now I think we’ve all read that the FDA is on the brink of approving the Allergan lap band for fatties who are only a little bit fat. This week, Diana Zuckerman wrote a terrific op-ed piece for the New York Times that questions the wisdom of doing so. As she very wisely points out, there’s no real data showing that the benefits of lap bands outweigh the risks even for the people getting them right now, so letting even less-fat people have them (and, by the way, opening the door for Medicare and Medicaid to pay for that) is rushing things just a tad.
Here’s a link to the piece.
Once this genie is out of the bottle, our national obsession with fat guarantees it will be hell to put it back in. So let’s get some real, long-term data on the table that says this is safer and healthier in the long term than other options– including just leaving people the heck alone– before we start tossing lap bands at everybody who doesn’t have sixpack abs. (And before you say that’s an exaggeration, are you sure you know what a person with a BMI of 30 looks like? Here are a few examples.)
January 20, 2011 at 4:18 PM |
[...] physicians speak out against the rush to the operating table By thefatchickdiaries Recently, I posted in support of a New York Times opinion piece that questioned the wisdom of the FDA expanding lap band [...]
February 17, 2011 at 10:48 AM |
[...] too long ago I wrote this about Allergan’s push to get the FDA to approve the lap band for people with a BMI as low as [...]